


Ignorantia legis neminem excusat

by well_of_sapphire_fears



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Angst, Drama, Growing Up, Humor, Lee Minho | Lee Know-centric, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Depression, Self-Acceptance, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2020-12-24 18:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21104054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/well_of_sapphire_fears/pseuds/well_of_sapphire_fears
Summary: Alternatively:The dissertation on the heavens and how we reach out to them even though humans were never meant to fly. A tale that wants to say - poeple are just people. The only thing we can do is make mistakes and grow from them.Minho is born, grows, meets people and learns a few things about himself he never knew before, because maybe this is what that ‘adulthood’ people always mention is all about. Or maybe it’s not, but he still changes and as he looks at his past, he can only hope it’s for the better and pray to the gods he never believed in that Jisung will always keep smiling like this.





	1. 宇 [ the universe ]

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a oneshot, but I've reached 30k and decided it may be a bit too long to publish it as a whole. I can just hope the breaks won't feel too awkward. On the other hand - I will probably publish the whole story soon.

Minho is born on a Sunday morning in the year of the Tiger, just another new-born out of many, born in one of the hospitals in Gimpo – a medium sized town by the North Korean border. October 25th 1998 is a cold autumn day, but the sky is clear and blue, no cloud in sight. A few weeks later, when his parents go to register their baby, his mother will recall that very sight and change their original decision about the characters of his name.

In the end, she writes 旻浩. 旻, the ‘min,’ meaning heaven and 浩, the ‘ho’, that means vast. She writes it down, because she’s still young and naive, but she realizes she doesn’t want to name her child after jewels and riches for prosperity or after qualities like good or heroic so that he becomes someone like that when he grows up.

She just wants him to _be_. Like the sky above.

Minho is too young to understand it back then, and he’ll still be too young to do so for decades more. It’ll come back to him on the day of his 27th birthday and as he’ll gaze around on the friends surrounding him, he’ll come to a realisation that maybe, just maybe, he’ll always be too young to understand exactly what his mother wanted and that maybe, it’s fine.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For now, Minho just grows.

Life goes on.

He meets Nari for the first time when he’s 8 months old. Neither of them remember it, but the pictures are there to be pulled out at the most inopportune and embarrassing of times – Minho already trying to stand and failing hilariously and Nari’s chubby two-year-old body running around in excitement with chocolate smeared on her cheeks. Their moms are best friends, have been for years now, and this is the first time they manage to meet up since Minho’s birth. After that, the visits to each other’s houses become an event for the two, gathering excitement levels comparable to going to an amusement park. It’s hard, when their family lives in Gimpo and the Kim’s live in Daejon, but they still make sure to meet up at least once a year during Minho’s childhood and adolescence years.

While he thrives in kindergarten, gets called super smart and polite, Minho does only mediocre at school, so he figures many kids can be geniuses until you throw grades into the mix. His parents aren’t super proud of him, but he works hard enough to pass every subject, so they’re not that disappointed either.

He spends a lot of time with their pets. His mom loves animals and keeps adopting new ones or offering to take care of their friends’ when they want to take a vacation, so their house is always full of them. Minho grows up helping his mom with them, because cleaning and cooking are her tasks and she doesn’t want him to interrupt and he gets delegated to always walking their two dogs.

It may be a chore, but he likes doing it. The dogs are smart and learn quickly and Minho feels enormous pride when after hours of working with them, they learn new tricks. Watching them giving him their paws or playing dead shouldn’t feel like such an achievement, but it does. It simply makes Minho happy.

When it comes to social life, Minho sort of... drifts through his life. He's not very lonely, always manages to find friends at school, but they never become more than that - they're simply the people he hangs out with at lunch and teams up during group projects. But they never meet outside of school and they lose contact as soon as they stop being classmates.

  
It's fine. It may sound lonely, but Minho honestly doesn't care that much. He has his family, their animals, and Nari just a phone call away. For him, it's enough.

Through the years he learns how to banish the lingering bitter aftertaste of loneliness by socialising. He's not shy by nature and he manages to master the art of small talk quickly, so it's easy to make acquaintances. He ends up being the guy who knows everyone in his year, but that no one knows that well. Maybe if he was older, he’d get called an enigma but such words do not belong in elementary students’ dictionary, so he’s just Lee Minho (or sometimes, that weird alien kid, if the boys from the second class are feeling rude – he doesn’t let it bother him though).

Life goes on.

As he turns from a child into a teenager, not many things change. Minho’s relationship with his parents is still… good. They have their fights, like all families do, but it’s fine, it’s okay. His parents love him.

It’s just… life that happens, Minho thinks.

When he’ll look back on his adolescence as a grown up, Minho will understand his parents’ situation better, but as a child it feels like he’s _wrong_. Like he’s done something that made his parents so estranged from each other, like he’s the reason his dad comes home late every day or that his mom looks the happiest when she’s taking care of the animals they keep adopting.

His mother… She is a sweet, loving woman, who just wants the best for him and always tells him to follow his passions. When he answers her that he doesn’t have one, she just frowns, disappointment clear in her eyes as she pats his hair reassuringly. It feels a bit like her sad gaze is his fault, so he tries, tries so hard to find a passion, a dream, but always ends up quitting after a few months, bored and not wanting to waste time on doing something he doesn’t care about.

He finds dance in middle school.

It seems then like he might’ve just solved the problem, because although dance is hard and demanding, when his body listens to him and he becomes one with the beat, he can’t help but think _this is what_ _flying must feel like_. This is probably the closest he’ll ever come to the feeling, considering his fear of heights and he loves it with all his might, throws all he has into practising. His mom seems happier too, when he comes home sweaty and tired, but with a smile on his face.

For a moment, just a few months, it’s perfect.

Then the semester ends, and he comes home with grades below average. He passes, but barely and his father’s lips pressed into a thin line is the only warning he gets before the shouting starts. Afterwards, his mother comforts him saying it’s been a stressful day at work and his dad apologises the next morning, admitting that he went overboard, but the impression stays for the long time. His father’s anger bursts the bubble he happily constructed around himself and he starts to notice things he didn’t notice before – how his dad frowns at every mention of his dance classes, how his teachers look at him disapprovingly every time he loses focus in class and just taps his foot, reviewing the latest choreography in his head, how it’s been harder to be everyone’s friend, because of the sliver of disappointment that he feels in his chest when he starts talking about dance and finds no one listening. There’s a knot of fear in his gut that tightens every time he hears only one person in a million can succeed in an artistic field and his dance teacher’s praises about his talent cannot quell it, because what if he’s _not_ that one person.

He quits it right before middle school ends. He’s going to a technical high school. Maybe there, he’ll find a passion that’ll make his father proud.

In the end, even after he quits, his dad is simply… rarely there. It’s money, it’s always money, the adult Minho will realize, but the child Minho just knows that if he’s lucky and wakes up early enough, he’ll see him leaving in the morning. He comes home long after his son’s bedtime and sleeps most of his free days away. When teenage Minho is faced with the prospect that his dancing will be just another source of stress for him and will cause them to drift even further away… He simply chooses the lesser evil.

It’s no one’s fault. This is his choice.

It may sound sad, but Minho doesn’t think about it much. He keeps himself busy with school and responsibilities and just like this, life goes on.

The visits to the Kim’s that used to be a family tradition in his childhood and turned into trips with just his mom in middle school, stop completely in high school. Life gets in the way and they’re all busy. And it’s not like Nari even lives with her parents anymore, so Minho truthfully doesn’t really have an incentive to go. He loves Nari’s mom almost as much as his own, calls her from time to time, but school is so much harder than it used to be and everyone keeps talking about the CSATs, so he has to struggle to keep up.

He spends most of his time studying at school and the academy. He’s not a social butterfly anymore, but he retains the ease of small talk, finding comfort in learning the little things everyone tells him. Even if he doesn’t make life-long friendships, he still likes talking to people and finding out about them, so he does it. He grows from the cute boy in the neighbourhood to quite a handsome young man and it’s only natural he gets a few confessions, but none of them ever turn into a relationship that lasts more than a few months.

If from time to time he thinks that he’s become a lot more guarded and closed off than before (and maybe a bit more afraid of living), he quickly banishes the thought. It’s probably a part of being an adult. He’s simply growing up.

  
On his way home from his after-school academy, he always passes a prestigious dance school. Sometimes, he allows himself to wonder if dancing would make everything easier, more bearable. Logic tells him no – if he had kept attending, he’d just have less time to study, which would result in more stress. But once, the timing is right and just as he’s walking past it, the door opens and sweaty, tired youths spill out and he forgets logic, his scepticism or his fears. Their laughter becomes Minho’s melody and his heart measures the beat, and his limbs ache to move, to dance, to _fly_. Then, they pass him to go about their lives and he’s dragged back down to earth, crashing into the harsh reality. Some can follow their dreams. Some stay with their feet glued to cracked pavement, weighting them down like lead and shards of reality buried deep under their skin.

Minho’s seventeen when he realizes it weren’t the heights he’d been scared of since he was a little kid, it was falling and crashing into the ground instead.

He changes his route so that he doesn’t have to pass the dance school the next day.

And life goes on like this. Then, he finishes high school and goes to Seoul to university.

There's no big reason for that. There is an uni in Gimpo too and some of the people he knows are going there, but his dad likes the prestige and he somehow manages to pass the exams well enough to get in. Minho still doesn't have a dream, ignores the little voice in the back of his head that whispers about dance, so he takes his dad's suggestion and chooses Business as his major. He doesn't think he'll hate it at least.

The thing that makes the decision to leave his hometown become the final one is that Nari will be there. She went to Seoul years before, because she got into a prestigious art high school. Back then, Nari had that dream of becoming an idol. She went to every audition and even got into some huge company. To Minho those years were a bit lonelier than before cause Nari was always busy, so their contact got reduced to infrequent phone calls and texts.

Minho had been fine though. It was important to Nari, her dream, so he wasn’t going to be bitter about less attention being paid to him. He just kept supporting the girl quietly, shooting her short messages to remind her to eat all her meals and never mentioning the sceptical thoughts inside his head that said the elder wouldn’t make it. Nari was talented, _so talented_, but Minho knew her personality and he thought she’d never push to the front, would instead try to give more space and opportunities to the others and you don’t… You don’t debut if you do that. If you’re not selfish enough.

He swallowed the sentence whenever he felt it in the back of his throat during their phone calls. He came close to saying it out loud just once, when he visited Nari not long after the incident with the dance school.

But that… That wasn’t the right moment for it.

After Nari moved to Seoul, dhe was always busy training, so Minho got used to less frequent calls. Then, when Minho was in his second year of high school, Nari just stopped picking up one day. He dismissed it as a busy period, but a few days later Mrs. Kim called him asking about her daughter, who wasn’t returning her calls.

In retrospect, Minho thanks God it was a Friday, because he didn’t even think before packing a bag and getting on the first train to Seoul. His parents would’ve killed him if he ditched school so close to the finals, so someone up there must’ve been looking out for him.

It was a weird weekend. Maybe weird is the wrong word, but that’s how it felt to Minho. Different. Awkward at times and maybe even a bit uncomfortable. But Minho ignored the already familiar knot in his gut, because the lack of control over the situation felt too much like falling, and he didn’t let it deter him.

Nari as a child had been a cute, happy, chubby girl. As she was the youngest in her family, they spoiled her quite a bit. Minho never really understood why his friend changed (was it because she had to take care of Minho?), but over the years she turned into a quiet, calm youth. She was still Nari, still had that incredible warmth inside that made her _her,_ but it was hidden behind a posture of strength, composure and level-headedness. By the time Minho reached the door to Nari’s small apartment on that cold Friday evening, he had gotten so used to this sturdy image he kind of forgot that wasn’t all there was.

Seeing Nari’s puffy and red eyes when he opened the door was enough to wake Minho up and remind him that this was the same girl who sobbed so violently when her goldfish died many years earlier. As he looked at Nari’s wet cheeks, he had the ugly urge to just run away, because this wasn’t a situation he knew how to deal with, and his heart thumped in his chest in fear.

But Minho just walked into the apartment and stayed. The whole weekend, in fact. He wasn’t good at feelings or at comforting others, but this was Nari, the closest person he ever had to an older sister and a best friend. He couldn’t not help.

It turned out to be one of the longest, and as mentioned before, weirdest weekends of Minho’s life. Simply wanting to comfort didn’t magically make it any easier nor less agonizing on his, I-hate-talking-about-feelings-especially-if-they-have-to-do-with-failed-dreams part. But he never gave up, kept picking up the broken pieces of his friend, hiding the fact that it made his own fingers bleed.

It was the usual, a normal story that you often don’t hear. Kpop groups debuted all the time, the market seemingly overflowing with them, so much that it was easy to forget that for one idol struggling in the industry there were probably 10 equally as talented and hardworking trainees who never even got a chance to debut. And Nari simply turned out to belong to those ten.

The fact Minho predicted that, sat in his mouth like ash. It felt too much like betrayal and made his heart twist in his chest in a weird mixture of regret and shame, but he just ignored it and focused all his attention on putting the elder back together.

There are few things Minho believes in, but one of them is that Nari’s strong. She’d be fine.

Minho had to leave on Sunday, because he was still 17 and didn’t have much to say where his parents ordered, but by then Nari was almost back to her normal self, joking around about how she never liked dancing in the first place.

“I’d be better off as a music teacher instead,” Nari had told him when they were waiting for the train on the station in Seoul.

“It would suit you,” Minho had replied. A joke showed up at the back of his throat, something self-deprecating about how in real life people just never get to follow their dreams and whatnot, but it felt too fresh for Nari and, looking at how it felt like a shard of glass cutting him open from the inside, it was too fresh for him as well.

And now, Minho is 20 and he's going to Seoul to stay for good.

It’s both different and not. Seoul is an enormous city that never sleeps and it’s slightly terrifying but having Nari softens the blow, especially since they decide from the beginning to meet at least once a week for coffee. He has to sign up for his every class by himself and manage his schedule, but it’s a nice challenge. And Minho meets it head on, managing to keep his grades above average with only a few all-nighters pulled from time to time.

There's a small dance studio not far from campus. Minho stumbles upon its' flier pinned in the hall of his dormitory building during his first week - they're offering classes for students for a big discount. They're having auditions the next week, because the whole idea is to gather talented dancers from different universities to form a team to send to competitions.

It's stupid. Going there is pointless because Minho hasn't danced, hasn't allowed himself to dance since middle school. There is absolutely no way he's going to pass auditions when the classes are almost free and it seems like the prizes from contest would be distributed among the dancers as well as the studio. Students would kill for something like that.

He can pass his obligatory PE classes this way, he mumbles excuses to himself as he goes to the audition. He says the same thing to his dad two weeks later, because by a stroke of luck, he actually passes.

They're not children anymore, so Minho doesn't get praised, but his hard work and stubbornness earn him respect among his groupmates. The practices turn out to be a blessing, because Nari has a life as well and her own friends, so she cannot be at Minho’s beck and call and the dance classes become his safe haven, disconnected from his hectic schedule and difficult classes.

No. The classes aren’t that bad. He doesn’t… He doesn’t hate them.

He doesn't.

People at the uni are the same as people everywhere else. His roommate is nice enough, even though he leaves dirty laundry on the floor and comes back on 4am on weekends. It could be worse, Minho reckons. He’s at least not getting kicked out because of one night stands the way the guy from the room opposite theirs.

He meets Nari’s boyfriend too, at one point during his first year. His name is Chan and he’s studying music production. They don’t talk for long and Minho forgets his name right after their encounter (he calls him ‘Nari’s Australian boy’ in his head for months before it slips out and Nari threatens him into remembering), but he seems nice enough. Besides, Minho trusts Nari’s choices and knows the elder knows how to take care of herself. She’d never get an asshole as a boyfriend.

Maybe he could have gotten to know him better in different circumstances, but Chan just seems so busy. Nari’s not that bad with managing her schedule, but Minho can see how dark Chan’s eyebags are under layers of concealer from where he’s standing two meters away during their first encounter so he decides it’d be better to wait and not bother him when he’s so tired. He only realises later that that’s simply how Chan always is, but by then it’d feel too awkward to ask him to hang out and they stay as acquaintances who occasionally meet in passing at Nari’s place.

(It’s not that he avoids Chan because he’s studying something he’s dreamt of since he was a child or because being close to someone who lives and breathes music in that honest way Chan seems to still hurts a bit. It’s not that.)

Life goes on. He finishes his first and second year successfully and starts his third one, counting the days till he finishes school. He honestly expects the rest of his stay at the uni to be the same, not really deviating from the routine he set up in the beginning. It would be fine, to live here just the way he’s been living his whole life.

But then… Something changes. Something special and bizarre, with big eyes and chubby cheeks that looks eerily like a squirrel.

He meets Jisung.


	2. 燦 [ glorious ]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world keeps turning and nothing changes, except- It does.
> 
> Stray Kids happen.

Where were we? Oh right.

Minho meets Jisung.

Huh.

It sounds so insignificant when you put it this way, but that’s what happens. They simply meet. Such a small thing, but it serves as a start to a sequence of events that change Minho and his life completely.

But let us start at the beginning.

It happens during Nari’s birthday party, the one after her graduation. Minho helps organise it because even though Chan had moved in with her a few months ago and Nari is busy with work, Chan is just shit at surprises. He recruits Minho as a ‘helping hand’, but in the end Minho just sighs and takes over everything, tired of the elder changing his mind every five minutes. He wants to make it perfect for Nari too, but renting out a whole restaurant is a bit of an overkill. Besides, who’d pay for that? Thankfully, Chan doesn’t refute Minho’s decision to have the party at their apartment and dutifully takes Nari out for a date so that the younger can decorate their flat.

Jisung’s just _there_. He knows both Chan and Nari, so it’s a normal thing he’s been invited. When a few hours in, him and Minho find themselves together on the couch and finally strike up a conversation watching the insanity around them, Jisung quickly remarks how weird it is that they hadn't met earlier. Nari and Chan have been dating for a year already, and they've known each other even longer, so Minho has met the Australian many times by now. He's learned at some point that Chan belonged to a team of soundcloud rappers, but the specifics kind of flew over his head. He never asked and Chan is not the type to boast about it, but 3RACHA, as Minho learns from Jisung, had existed for quite some time now.

It is during that talk that they realise how intertwined their social circles are. Jisung is after all the person who Hyunjin, his dance teammate (that Minho has never really talked to, but always knew about because the boy was a fucking monster on stage) kept whining about the whole previous year. Jisung says they were 'healthy rivals' that day on the couch, but as far as Minho remembers it was just a war of childish pranks that Nari had to put a stop to at one point. Thank god for the eldest, Minho couldn't look at mint toothpaste for months afterwards and he was at the scene of the last incidents just for a few minutes.

Minho also learns that for some unexplainable reason, Jisung and Hyunjin are best friends now. Oh, the youths these days, he sighs inside.

Changbin, the third rapper of their little team turns out to be the same broody emo has-a-chandelier-in-his-living-room Changbin Minho had partnered with in Society Economics for a project the year before. He also turns out to be the handsome and scary hyung that Felix, another dance dongsaeng of Minho (those youngsters were freakishly talented, or maybe Minho was just getting old) had harboured an immense crush on since what feels like forever.

Felix had hidden behind Hyunjin at the beginning of the party, his face perpetually red like a tomato. It was amusing at first, but Minho hopes that he’ll calm down soon. Changbin’s not the most observant person, but he’d have to be blind not to notice the blonde boy, even though he’s hiding beside such a beanpole. Plus, the boy Hyunjin came with, a first year called… Sangmin? Seungmin? Was that his name? Minho’s not sure. Whatever. But his face had been gradually falling as Felix kept clinging to the other dancer, so much that by 9 pm it pretty much turned into a scowl. And he didn’t look like someone you’d want as your enemy.

Minho just shakes his head when he looks at them and returns to his conversation with Jisung. He doesn’t know them that well or at all in some cases. It’s not his problem.

Minho also learns that Jisung knows Jeongin, the baby-faced soon-to-be-freshman-here Minho met when he sneaked into one of his lectures, trying to decide if he wanted to attend this university or not, the one who weirdly managed to land himself a spot in his heart in the space reserved for his cats and small cute animals. It must’ve been his smile – that boy never stopped smiling, even when their lecturer asked him a question, even though he had no way of knowing the answer.

It’s a night full of revelations like this and not only for them. Jeongin, who Minho thought shy and reserved, turns out to be very popular – he mumbles to Minho at one point that he got invited to this party by five different people (and yes, Minho was one of them) and every attendant seems to pinch his cheeks or pat his head at least once during the night. There’s also a loud rendition of Australia’s national anthem when Felix and Chan realise they’re both from Sydney, after which they disappear into the bedroom for an hour and the only signs of life are random shouts of the word ‘mate’ that come through the door.

When the last thing happens, Minho gazes out of the corner of his eye at Nari worriedly, but the elder is engaged in an amicable conversation with Changbin. She doesn’t seem bothered by her boyfriend disappearing from her birthday party with practically a stranger. Minho doesn’t know Chan that well, but from what he’s gathered he’s a sweet and kind person that maybe just sometimes gets too into his head and forgets about everything else.

He shrugs. Everyone’s different, so maybe Nari’s fine with being ditched like that.

Chan and Felix resurface an hour later, smiling widely and holding hands. They look like they have a connection, the way Chan backhugs Felix or the way the younger keeps playing with their intertwined fingers. If Minho didn’t know Chan, he’d think… No, that’s not fair. They’re not friends, but Chan deserves more credit than that. He’s been Nari’s boyfriend for over a year already.

Minho just gulps down the rest of his beer, ignoring the little voice that reminds him that no love lasts and that you should let it go before an inevitable crash.

He quickly forgets about his treacherous thoughts, because there’s a loud shout from Jeongin of ‘it’s snowing’ and Minho laughs at the thought of how much he must’ve drunk to hallucinate snow in April and turns to scold the person who gave alcohol to a minor. He stops laughing soon, because as he looks out of the window, he realizes the younger boy is right – there is a thin layer of snow covering everything. It’ll probably melt before the morning comes, but it’s so weird Minho can’t help but feel like it’s supposed to mean something.

It feels like a sign. Like a change is happening, a cog of reality giving a soft ‘click’ as it moves and changes the path of time.

Minho shakes his head, chasing off the weird stray thoughts. In the end, he’s a realist, as he taught himself to be, so after a moment of letting himself daydream, he comes back to reality and to the events inside the house.

“It’s really snowing, huh,” Jisung voice is quiet as he looks out onto the street. His eyes are wide, his tan skin almost glowing in the warm ceiling lights and he’s munching on some chips, his cheeks bulging out like-

“A squirrel.” Minho breathes out and smiles at the realisation.

The younger turns back to him, his too long dark bangs falling into his eyes. “What?”

“You look like a squirrel,” Minho can’t help but giggle, the sound airy, light and free. It’s unusual, because he learnt early on not to show this ‘weird’ side of him to strangers, but it feels different with Jisung, like he can be himself without any consequences. It’s something he hasn’t experienced in years, probably ever since that first few months of dance classes in middle school, when everything seemed perfect.

Jisung simply feels different.

Jisung looks at him oddly, like he can’t quite believe a person he’s just met said that to him, but then Minho grins at him playfully and the younger rolls his eyes and smiles back widely which makes his cheeks look even bigger. “So I’ve been told.”

The party continues, loud and hectic just like any other and Minho, not knowing that this event he’ll later regard as the beginning of everything, just makes fun of different people’s drunken antics from his seat on the couch, where he sips his drink with Jisung sitting beside him.

College parties are… One of a kind, filled with loud voices and laughter. Maybe that’s what’s youth all about.

Somehow, at one point, a slightly tipsy Felix and a very drunk Hyunjin get the idea to play some Australian game with all the guests, the name of it lost in the slight slur of Felix’s speech and his accent. Minho has no idea what the game is supposed to be even about, because they lose interest long before starting to play but they do complete the first step of their preparations - making a group chat with everyone. Though it is kind of impressive that they manage to that considering Hyunjin keeps bursting out into laughter every five seconds.

Minho shakes his head. He doesn’t attend parties that often, but he notes for the future, that they seem to be a place where you can get some nice blackmail material.

Minho and Jisung keep talking, somehow spending the whole party in conversation about their passions and lives. It’s weirdly… easy. Minho is a master of small talk, but he’s never this open with people and they’re never this open with him, staying instead on mundane and unimportant topics. Jisung is just the right kind of attentive and honestly interested which makes Minho want to share things about himself and the usual anxiety in his gut that talking about his dreams causes seems dimmer, less constraining. It’s the kind of comfortable Minho only feels with people he’s known for years, like Nari or his family. He’s met Jisung only a few hours earlier, but it seems like they’ve been best friends for decades.

It’s not a bad feeling, but it is different. But Minho laughs at Jisung’s jokes and Jisung laughs at his, and Minho can’t help but think if making friendships have always been this easy, no one would get lonely.

Then, the party ends at around 4 am and everyone besides Minho leave. He’d go home too, but Nari knows how angry his roommate would become at being woken at such an hour (hypocritical, Minho knows), so she asks him to take their couch and Minho agrees, walking Jisung to the door as the younger leaves with Changbin, their conversation not wanting to end.

They end up never exchanging phone numbers. During the party Jisung doesn’t breach the subject and Minho’s too scared to, afraid the question will burst the bubble they found themselves in. The comfortable ambience makes Minho feel weirdly warm and fuzzy inside, so much that the thought of it happening ever again seems ridiculous. It’s that fresh and pure kind of happiness you encounter once in your life and know you will never find it again, one that trying to chase will only end in disappointment, so Minho simply smiles and lets it go.

Jisung leaves with a wave and a bright grin, his dark brown hair disappearing behind the elevator’s doors as they close while Minho watches from the doorstep.

And that’s it.

They go their separate ways. Their social circles are intertwined, and Minho knows that Nari has Jisung’s number. She’d give it to him if he just asked.

Minho doesn’t. And since he never gets contacted by an unfamiliar number, he figures Jisung doesn’t either.

Maybe it’s better like this.

Somehow, the stupid random group chat stays. There's more than 30 people there, but no one leaves. It’s there, quiet, with an occasional meme from Felix or the boy’s best friend Eric. Minho forgets completely about it, busy with life and his spring semester classes and performances.

The finals are getting closer, so he starts spending more time in the library. He finds the scowling boy from the party, Seungmin, there, at the table by the window. It seems like he never leaves, always in the same spot whenever Minho walks in. It’s just an observation for some time, but then one Friday all seats but the one opposite Seungmin are taken, so Minho sits, nodding to the boy. Seungmin nods back.

Minho starts sitting there every time he goes to study in the library.

The semester ends. Minho’s grades could be better, but they always could be and he’s quite pleased with himself this time. He doesn’t have to sign up for any of the summer semester classes and just chooses to just have a long vacation before his last semester. He wants to go out to the club with Nari to celebrate, but she has a date with Chan, so Minho decides to go by himself.

It’s already quite late when he gets there and the club is full, students celebrating after the finals. Minho pushes through the crowd, planning to get himself a drink before joining others on the dancefloor, but he gets side-tracked when he suddenly hears a shout of ‘Minho-hyung!’ from behind. He turns and sees a figure standing next to the wall, waving their hand at him.

It’s Hyunijn, his black hair styled and face with light makeup that accentuates his features, but his smile is familiar, because Minho sees it whenever he comes to dance practice, so he heads to say hi now.

Him and Hyunjin… They’re not friends. Although Minho can admit that after Nari’s party they’ve talked a couple of times during class, same with Felix, but it never breached any subject beside dance. He likes Hyunjin, likes both of them actually and they’re very talented and even more enthusiastic, so he can already foresee their bright futures. But Minho isn’t great at forming actual friendships, so for now they just continue on as something he’d describe as ‘friendly acquaintances’.

“I didn’t take you for a clubbing type, Hyunjin. Did you come alone?” Minho asks, frowning slightly when he reaches him, because there’s red on Hyunjin’s cheeks that’s not there because of just heat and he doesn’t seem very steady on his feet. They haven’t talked a lot, but Minho had noticed Hyunjin is innocent in ways you wouldn’t expect from someone with looks and charisma like his and this club doesn’t really have the best reputation.

Hyunjin giggles. “No actually, we – me, Seungmin and Jisung, we’re here as support. Jisung’s heard that Changbin-hyung was planning on coming here tonight, so we took care of Felix’s makeup and clothes and dragged him here. Don’t tell anyone, but that crush is becoming unbearable.”

Minho relaxes slightly, glad the younger is here with his friends. They don’t know each other well, but Minho wouldn’t want to leave a tipsy beautiful boy like Hyunjin alone in a club. He’ll just watch him until any of the others come and then leave to dance without worries. “I didn’t know you were that close,” he fills the silence, because he’s barely ever seen Felix and Hyunjin interact.

“Well…” Hyunjin rubs his nape smiling sheepishly. He’s semi talkative on daily basis, a bit (very) overdramatic, but now his gaze is slightly unfocused. He must’ve already drunk quite a lot and Minho hopes he isn’t about to say more than he’d like to the elder. “I wouldn’t say we are. We’re more like acquaintances, Seungmin only heard of Felix before from my stories about dance classes. But Minnie has a heart of gold and when Jisung mentioned Changbin-hyung, he wanted to do something for Felix tonight. He can’t go home, you know? He has to stay for the summer classes and since Australia is so far away, his family won’t visit him here. It’s sad.”

Minho nods, but doesn’t get to say anything more because suddenly, he feels a chill. It’s not the I’ve-forgotten-my-jacket-at-home type, but rather a someone-pissed-off-is-staring-at-me type. There are goosebumps on his arms and legs and he almost turns before Seungmin walks up to stand next to Hyunjin, putting an arm around his shoulders, his gaze cold. After a few seconds, he seems to recognize Minho and his eyes become less hostile, although he doesn’t remove his hand.

If Hyunjin was smiling before then now he looks like he’s glowing. “Minnie, there you are. This is Minho-hyung, the super talented dancer-hyung I told you about. Minho-hyung, this is Seungmin, my best friend,” Hyunjin gestures between them. He seems under the impression they’ve never met before, but Seungmin doesn’t correct him and his gaze communicates something Minho has no intention of challenging, so he chooses to just nod silently. Although Seungmin doesn’t move, Minho can see then hints of a smirk on his face when he breaks eye contact with him and he almost sighs, exasperated.

_Best friends. Yeah right_.

“So, Minho-ssi,” Seungmin begins, all formal and polite even though they’re in some random club, surrounded by dozens of sweaty bodies jumping to the beat mindlessly. “Are you celebrating your graduation?”

Minho shakes his head and sighs internally because it’s a question he’s already answered a hundred times. It’s not his fault most courses take 3 years. “No, my course is actually 7 semesters long, so I still have one to go.”

Seungmin nods. Hyunjin’s looking to the side, probably searching the dancefloor for the other two, and he stands on his toes to try to look over the crowd’s heads and the movement seems to distract Seungmin from their conversation. The boy whips his head to the side, surprised by the sudden action, but then he smiles fondly and his hands automatically go to Hyunjin’s waist to support him.

_Great_, Minho can’t help the sarcastic thoughts as seconds tick by.

The air turns awkward as the other two seem to forget about him standing there and Minho is just about to excuse himself and leave the pair alone, when he hears another voice. “Minho-hyung? What are you doing here?”

“I’m-” Minho breaks off, gulps and quickly continues hoping no one noticed his slip up. “Just clubbing before leaving Seoul.”

Jisung’s hair is _blue_.

It’s not the teal shade he’s seen on some freshman’s head last semester, but rather a midnight tone that reminds Minho of the sky on moonless nights. It matches the dark smoky makeup and blue contacts that Jisung’s sporting and although he never would’ve imagined Jisung in such an unusual hair colour before, it weirdly fits him.

And there’s the thing – Minho knows he's handsome. He's heard too many whispers and giggles behind his back not to. Thankfully he's just the right kind of friendly to have girls swooning after him, but doesn't let anyone get too close so they end up never confessing. Hyunjin as well, Minho's well aware of the number of boys and girls alike crushing on him, although they normally do not confess – something to do with him being too handsome. Minho is also half sure there exists a ‘Hyunjin fanclub’ with members from every uni in Seoul.

And well… It will sound bad no matter how you put it, but Jisung doesn’t belong to the ‘pretty’ crowd. Of course everyone’s beautiful in their own way, we should love ourselves, yadda, yadda – in the end, Minho is a realist and he knows the younger’s face does not fit into the beauty standards and when they met for the first time, he never really considered him as attractive. There are only so many things you can think of about during one conversation and Minho’s train of thoughts on that party hadn’t even come close to such territories.

This though…

This is a perfect one-night-stand if Minho’s ever seen one.

But it’s also Jisung, Chan’s best friend and the stranger with whom Minho had felt a connection on Nari’s birthday party. The one with whom the conversation flew so smoothly, and their personalities matched in a way that made Minho think he might’ve just found a best friend, because Nari has always been more of an older brother than anything else.

Underneath the layers of makeup, Jisung’s big eyes seem to be twinkling in the club lights and his smile is still the same happy grin Minho had last seen months earlier, so he just swallows and ignores the burning in his gut. He’s not good with relationships, as all his past brief partners liked to remind him. He wouldn’t want to lead Jisung on and they only met once, but the thought of hurting him makes Minho nauseous.

Not to mention, Minho has a train to catch tomorrow morning.

The silence stretches as Minho gets lost in his thoughts. The trio seem to be staring at him, not talking and he startles when he realizes that. Dammit, why does he have a reputation of being amicable? It always makes people think he likes to lead conversations, while he, in fact, prefers to listen. Grasping for something to say, Minho blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind. “Your hair.” It doesn’t even come out as a question, more like a sentence and Minho cringes.

_Smooth, Minho. Very, very smooth._

Jisung giggles, embarrassed, as he twirls a strand of hair between his fingers. “Oh this? That’s just something to celebrate passing every subject of my first year. It’ll wash out after a few showers, but I was actually thinking of maybe bleaching my hair this summer. I like Felix’s hair colour.”

Sometime during finals Felix had dyed his hair a very obnoxious shade of orange. Minho’d never even consider doing something so ostentatious to his scalp, but it weirdly fits the other dancer. It’s his hair anyways, Minho had shrugged when he first saw the change – he can do anything he wants to with it.

“Oh, I see…” Minho nods, trying to ignore the images of Jisung in orange hair that show up in the back of his mind. The colour feels weirdly fitting, because Jisung may look like a squirrel, but he reminds Minho more of a flame. “Maybe you should try with blonde first? To see if light hair fits you?”

“Maybe you’re right, hyung,” Jisung’s gaze becomes thoughtful as he ponders about the idea. His little frown and pouting expression should look weird, with how the adorable look contrasts with his sexy make up and clothes, but it just makes Minho smile, because it feels so much like Jisung.

Another silence falls without him noticing and he only becomes aware of the fact he’s been silently staring at Jisung for the past few minutes after the DJ changes the song. Damn. He’s mastered the art of small talk years ago, why is he suddenly having problems now?

Weirdly, it is Seungmin that comes to his rescue before he can say something embarrassing. “I don’t think Felix has that high of an alcohol tolerance, so we should probably take him back to the dorms. It doesn’t seem like Changbin-hyung is going to show up,” the boy says, frowning.

Jisung splutters at that, waving his hands around in protest. “No, you can’t do that! He’s just having fun, but he has it under control.”

Minho sweeps the room with his gaze, tuning out the argument. There’s a sharpness in Seungmin’s tone that Minho would’ve pinned as dislike before, the harsh way he’s arguing with Jisung, but he has a feeling it’s just the way Seungmin is when it comes to other people, all sharp edges and soft interior. With the exception of Hyunjin, maybe - he's just soft for him. He wonders how long they must’ve known each other, because the familiarity with which Seungmin’s arm still rests at Hyunjin’s waist or the way the taller boy is leaning into his side speak volumes about how comfortable they are with each other.

The dancefloor is crowded, the bodies jumping to the beat, but there’s a clearing to their left, people parting and watching one person. The lone figure is dancing quite aggressively and Minho kind of wants to facepalm because who would follow some idiotic moves from a computer game in real life, but then he focuses on the mop of light hair and the person’s face and-

“…Is Felix doing Fortnite dances?” Minho interrupts the other three, quite taken aback by what he’s seeing, but Seungmin’s muffled curse from behind him ensures him that his vision is fine.

“Yes, he is. Jinnie, don’t even think about it, we’re taking him home,” Seungmin warns Hyunjin when the other’s eyes light up at the mention of dancing and starts walking over to the foreign boy. Minho follows him with the other two, weirdly curious about how Felix will react to being told he has to go without achieving his goal of meeting Changbin.

Thankfully (and to Minho's slight disappointment), it’s not hard to convince Felix to come with them and Minho helps drag him to the entrance, because he is the most sober one here. “Come on, it’s late and getting colder. We need to walk back to the dorms fast,” Seungmin gestures to the other two and takes Felix from Minho when they step out onto the street. The smile he gives the eldest now is different than before, softer. It looks grateful and almost… apologetic? Minho just cocks his head in response – why is he sorry?

Before Seungmin can answer the question in his gaze though, Hyunijn decides to start complaining. “Didn’t you drive us here, Minnie? Why can’t we go back in your car?” the black haired boy whines.

Minho and Seungmin roll their eyes simultaneously and the younger turns to answer. “We drove because I wasn’t planning on drinking anything, but if I recall correctly someone bought himself a drink and didn’t like so he gave it to me. It was just one drink, but I’m not willing to risk it and they lowered the maximum blood alcohol content threshold permitted when driving or in charge of a vehicle to 0.03% recently.” Felix takes advantage of the change of position and tucks his face into the crook of Seungmin’s neck, nuzzling his skin and mumbling something unintelligible.

Minho smiles, because the younger reminds him of his cats at home and sighs internally because, God, that boy _really_ can’t hold his alcohol.

“I haven’t heard of this change,” Jisung says loudly and Minho winces, wondering if he should intervene because the younger is swaying on his feet and he can already predict where his train of thought is headed. “I can just drive and say I didn’t know they changed the law.”

Yep. Minho totally called that.

“You’ve had a lot more to drink than me, I wouldn’t trust you with a bucket of water if my pants were on fire. Besides, ignorantia legis neminem excusat,” Seungmin says and Minho frowns, confused. The younger notices and he turns back to Minho to explain at the same time trying to get Felix to put his weight at least partially on his own two legs instead of Seungmin’s body. “Just because he doesn’t know he’s breaking the law doesn’t mean he won’t be punished. Ignorance is not an excuse.”

Well. If the constant stays at the library didn’t give Seungmin away, then this certainly does. Minho can’t help but feel a bit intimidated – you don’t want to make an enemy out of a future lawyer. “Law student?”

“Yes,” Seungmin’s smile turns a bit more predatory, but Minho blames it on the lighting. “I always wanted to be a prosecutor. Well then, we have to get going,” he turns and drags a stumbling Felix with him, Jisung and Hyunjin following close behind.

Minho watches them go, breathing in the fresh air. He’s just about to walk back when yelling stops him. Jisung and Hyunjin seem to have realised they never said goodbye so now they’re trying to make up for it by screaming from 50 meters away. Minho quickly raises his hand and waves, hoping the commotion will go unnoticed.

It seems to work until- “Yeah, have a nice summer, hyung!” Seungmin shouts when the two calm down a bit before unceremoniously starting to walk back to the dorms again. Hyunjin says something as he trails behind him and they’re too far away for Minho to make out the words, but even from here he can hear the whiny tone and he can’t help but smile again.

Minho shakes his head and giggles to himself. Since when do kids call him hyung after one conversation? The four boys are still slightly awkward and too careful with each other but as he stares at their retreating backs as they haul Felix’s ass home, he has a feeling they could become great friends if given a chance. Minho doesn’t really know many people his age well, usually gravitating to either younger or older, but the prospect of such seems inviting. On the other hand, they look like they’d be a force to reckon with, but Minho shrugs.

It’s not like they’re going to be his problem.

So Minho simply parties until he has to leave the club a few hours later (and yes, he does see Changbin there about twenty minutes after the four boys leave which causes him to giggle) and on the next day, he goes home. There, he spends most of his time petting Soonie and Doongie and helping his mother with house chores like the filial son he tries to be. It’s easy, and he especially enjoys getting 8 hours of sleep and _not_ studying. The life in Gimpo is slower than in Seoul and it lulls him into a state of semi-dreaming, where the days trickle through his fingers without him noticing. Maybe in the long run, he’d get bored, but for now he just enjoys being in a place where every day is the same, feeling almost disconnected from the rest of the world.

In the middle of the summer, his routine gets broken, another change crashing into his life and changing it completely although Minho doesn’t know it yet.

It isn’t until that summer evening when a notification shows up at his phone that he remembers about the group chat that originated at Nari’s party. It’s Jeongin, surprisingly. It’s a loose idea to maybe meet up and go the sea together. The boy’s from Busan and he’s there now after having graduated from high school, so he offers to show them around. It gets hot responses, everyone exalted at the prospect of renting some cabin by the beach and Minho laughs himself to tears at the idea of renting out a whole resort – the initial number of interested people reaches almost 40.

Minho also expresses his interest. He’s only been in Busan once, but he was too young to remember it now, so he’d like to see it. And Nari’s always nagging him about being more adventurous. It wouldn’t hurt, right?

Only 8 people end up going, 9 if you count Jeongin, with other people in the groupchat too busy. The other seven are made up of Chan and Nari, who take a break from all their adults responsibilities and the others who are still students – Changbin, the emo rich boy and the four millenials Minho met on accident before leaving Seoul.

Jeongin wants to get away from his parents so in the end they rent out a house for them all for two weeks, one not far from the beach. There’s three rooms and Minho ends up rooming with Nari and Chan, the only couple here. At first, they were planning to leave the smallest room to them, but Nari just gave them a side eye and asked ‘You really think we’re going to have sex with you next door? We can survive two weeks without it’. Which. Fair enough. Minho wouldn’t choose to sleep with someone knowing his friends can hear everything either.

So they decide to stay together in the room for 3, one closest to the door and next to the kitchen. They call it the ‘adult room’ since they’re the eldest and the others whine that they don’t trust them. Chan distracts them with jokes while Nari and Minho just look at each other with raised eyebrows because honestly? Yeah. They’ve been here together just a couple of hours, but Minho can already tell by how rowdy and loud the ’00 line’ (which they’ve chosen to call themselves and oh god, why did Minho have to be right about their playful nature) is that they’ll be needing supervision. They have to be near enough to extinguish any fires. Minho’s the grown up one here.

The cooking incident during their first dinner doesn’t count. No. Minho refuses to acknowledge that. He belongs to the responsible folk – if it weren’t for him, Hyunjin would’ve ended up burning the whole building down and not just his jacket. Nari though doesn’t seem to care and just bans him from the kitchen along with Changbin and Hyunjin.

Minho kind of wants to pout and whine, but the familiar anxiety in his gut stops him. He’s 23, he shouldn’t act like a child. He still makes fun of Nari’s tone when the eldest turns away and something settles in his chest when the rest giggle at his actions.

This exclusion from the adult group has its’ good sides as well. Living together is very eventful, but Nari or Chan never really ask Minho for help in the ‘parenting’ and he’s happy to just slink into the shadows and play around with the youngsters as the fun hyung. It’s interesting, playing a role he had never played before and even though he’s a bit awkward and at times doesn’t know how to act, the others take it in stride.

It’s the most fun Minho had in… probably ever, to be honest. The nine of them just seem to weirdly fit with each other. They’re all different, have their own quirks and behaviours, but somehow through the course of the stay, Minho gets to know and grows to like everyone. And in some unexplainable way, the rest grows to like him too.

Yeah. This realization bewilders Minho as well.

On the second day, they form another groupchat to have means of communication without bothering the people who ended up not coming and someone names it Stray Kids. No one owns up to it, but Minho’s bet is on Chan. The guy is sentimental like that. And he has that smile on his face whenever he looks at the rest that makes Minho think that if anyone were to ask him what non-romantic love looked like, he’d show them Chan’s eyes in these moments. Although they haven’t known each other for long and Minho is not a person that rushes relationships, he finds he doesn’t mind that gaze.

It just… Feels right. Warm. There’s a siren going off in the back of Minho’s head, about how it’s too soon and how Chan’s more in love with the idea of their group rather than the boys themselves, but for the one time in his life, he chooses to ignore it.

They’re staying here for all of two weeks, but time seems to pass differently, too fast and completely still at the same time. He shouldn’t let himself, but for the moment Minho chooses to just enjoy it and hope that Chan will have enough time to fall in love with all of their personalities slowly, attentively.

For a second, he allows himself to breathe in and believe they have a future in a way his sceptical nature rarely does. It’s improbable, but still… Minho can’t help himself.

Those two weeks pass in the haze of hot summer days and the sound of laughter. They go to the sea a lot and usually, it would bother Minho because he can’t swim. It doesn’t. Maybe it’s their warm smiles, jokes and honest consideration when they drag him into the water but never let go of his hand and always make sure he’s okay with it. Maybe it’s Jisung, with his dyed blonde hair, sparkly eyes and a grin, who stays with him on the beach a lot, saying he’s too lazy to swim and prefers talking to Minho.

Minho finds that somehow, their conversation still flows as easily as it did during their first meeting. It reminds him of the sand they’re sitting on, warm and soft, but slowly sucking his body into itself the more time passes, trying to engulf and swallow him whole.

For some reason, Minho doesn’t mind, because Jisung makes him giggle, is never put off by his behaviour or words and it weirdly doesn’t hurt to listen to him talk about music.

Then it’s time to part their ways.

On the last night, they don’t really go to sleep, wanting to get the most out of the time they have left. Minho’s half glad they bought tickets for the next day, because they’re so loud (seriously, you don’t need to scream so much when you’re playing Jenga) that the neighbours are sure to file a noise complaint. He doesn’t really care though. He simply loses himself in laughter and jokes and thinks that he might’ve found something special, so special most people never get to experience it. At least that’s how Minho feels. Does everyone go on a trip with 8 almost-strangers (okay, there’s Nari, so maybe 7) and two weeks later finds it hard to believe they haven’t known each other all their lives?

When the clock strikes 5, Minho finally falls asleep on the edge of the pile of bodies in their living room, and dreams. It’s not something he does often, or at least he never remembers any after waking up, which is probably the reason why he’ll think about it every time he’ll recall this trip later on. Even after they get up, eat breakfast and check if they packed everything, this dream stays vivid and clear in his mind, leaving its’ imprint on his future.

It’s just a stupid fantasy, honestly. About the 9 of them, living and eating together. About cracking jokes at two am when they’re laying on the floor, sweaty and exhausted. A vision so laughable and ridiculous, because they’re almost all in their twenties and it’s about time for Minho to stop making up scenarios that will never come true.

Still. Minho dreams about Stray Kids’ debut.

Afterwards, he wonders how he managed to come up with so many details. He doesn’t even listen to kpop that much or watch variety, but somehow, the picture of their 9 as an idol group is so clear in his mind. Of 3RACHA producing songs with parts for nine people, while he’s making choreographies with Felix and Hyunjin as Nari, Jeongin and Seungmin run through vocal warmups in the next room. Of standing together on stage and giving their all, not for money, not for fame, but because they _want to_. Because it’s their dream.

In the morning as they all fool around on the train station, waiting for the car that will take them home, Minho grows quiet. ‘Ah, so this is it,’ he thinks. The two weeks had been incredible, but now the bubble will burst and they will return to their lives and lead them like before. He’s not bitter about it, but somehow it hurts a lot more than all the farewells he’s been through before. It’s only been mere days, but these boys, this stupid, childish and clumsy gang had wormed its’ way into Minho’s heart like no one managed to before.

Still, life must go on, so he just smiles at them when he boards his train. Coincidentally, he’s the first one to do so and maybe it’s good because this way he can look at the grinning eight faces as they grow smaller and smaller with each meter he travels. He’ll keep them for nights when loneliness becomes this thick goo flowing in his veins and chocking him. He won't forget, even if everything always ends in small pieces on the floor and nothing ever lasts.

Life goes on.

Except- except this time it doesn’t. Not really. Because even though the clock keeps ticking, Stray Kids stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know the hair colour changes don't line up and they won't. I was inspired by things that actually happened, but I'm taking creative liberties. If you're here for the angst and sadder tags - don't worry, the happy narration will end soon :)
> 
> Also, thumbs up if you noticed a reference in here. Thank you for reading.


	3. 黃 [ yellow ]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jisung and everything in between.

Minho’s phone dies not soon into the journey, but when he finally reaches home and plugs it in, he finds it blowing up with messages. He smiles to himself at the bittersweet realisation, thinking that it’s just temporary. Reality is back. They will forget about the group chat soon. Stray Kids will become a memory, a cherished one, but nothing more.

It _doesn’t_.

As the rest of their summer ticks by Minho finds that the group chat keeps blowing up from time to time and everyone takes part in the conversation. Not only that – the rest never stop messaging him privately and they keep talking, enjoying his weird responses where other people have always awkwardly cut him off. He gets to know them better, because their stay in Busan had been wonderful but they never really had time for private, deep conversations. Although texting about it isn’t the best way, Minho gets told he’s a good listener and he doesn’t complain. He’s always liked hearing people’s stories.

One person in particular likes texting Minho at ungodly hours, waking him up and destroying his sleep schedule and although he always complains about it later, he answers. Every single time, he answers.

This person is Jisung. Minho doesn't think about what that means for now.

Days pass like this and his mother mentions he must’ve gained weight and his father says he seems taller now and Minho just smiles because he knows none of these things happened. He reckons something must’ve changed to make them say it, but after hours spent on wondering he can pinpoint just one miniscule difference from before.

He’s happier.

Huh. What a weird realisation to have, but it also doesn’t feel ground-breaking the way Minho reckons it should, just warm and comfortable. It comes easily, like a natural order of things.

Falling in love with Stray Kids, even as early on as this, is just so easy.

Minho shouldn’t let himself, but he chooses to _trust_. He uncovers his heart slowly and lets them all plant their roots there, hoping they will have the chance to grow into beautiful flower. Only time will tell if it’s a mistake or not.

Life goes on.

Somewhere along the rest of the summer, Jisung becomes Sungie and turns into a permanent fixture in Minho’s life in a way that feels more… personal than any of the others. It’s so natural that Minho doesn’t even notice it until he sees a cute dog on the street and he’s already sent its’ picture to Jisung before he realised what he’s done. He doesn’t know when exactly the video calls became a daily thing, when he learned that Jisung wears glasses at home because his eyes get tired of contacts or that his parents and older brother live in Malaysia. Minho just realizes one day that he remembers all those little facts, like how he can play guitar or how he’s always wanted to have a pet Leopard Gecko lizard.

Minho realizes that he wants to know more.

Weird. He’s never been this curious about someone, so it must mean something, right?

But he doesn’t get the chance to do something about it or even think more, because just like that, the summer is over and Minho has to head back to Seoul. Jisung picks him up at the station and after the initial warm, enthusiastic greeting, the walk to Minho’s apartment is quiet and tense. It makes Minho wonder if the ease with which they’ve been talking couldn’t be translated to real life now that their classes and responsibilities are back.

He’s curious whether Stray Kids will survive the end of summer and the possibility that they might not feels like an iron band around his heart. He’s already too attached, too used to them being _there_. He’s not sure what he would do if they were to just… stop.

Minho takes a deep breath and observes the busy streets instead of Jisung as they walk along them together. He knows better than to believe anything will last forever, he’s too much of a realist for that. One day Stray Kids will be gone, because life is life. No matter how much you love something, you will have to let it go.

Yet, he still needs them to be here for now. Just for some time. A moment at least.

Minho really fucking _wants_ them to last.

They reach the apartment Minho decided to rent this year, finally done with his roommate’s antics, soon enough and he sighs, because this is where they must part ways. Minho’s too tired and he needs to unpack before tomorrow. He knows Jeongin’s train is supposed to come soon and the part of group that has already got to Seoul decided a few weeks earlier to greet their youngest together, so Jisung shouldn’t linger for long if he wants to make it.

There’s one more thing though. A single, short question that breaks Minho’s reality into two and glues it back together – so perfectly you wouldn’t notice the change at all if you weren’t Minho himself. And he only knows, because this new world is better than the one before, its’ colours brighter and more saturated. It feels hopeful as well.

“Will you go out with me, hyung?” Jisung asks right before Minho closes the door. His eyes are wide and shiny, focused completely on the elder, waiting for his answer. There’s a fire in those irises and Minho thinks absentmindedly that it looks the perfect temperature to melt the ice shell he’s been living in all his life and not turn him into ashes.

This prospect is absolutely, positively _terrifying_.

But Minho spent all his life afraid of flying and he doesn’t want to be so scared anymore. Maybe this is the right time to take a leap into the unknown, so he counts two, three beats of his own heart, breathes in and then simply smirks and says “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight to see the movie you’ve been wanting to watch. Dress nicely – it’s a date.”

Minho closes the door after that, but he still sees the blinding grin Jisung sends his way. Maybe this is a good decision. Maybe it’ll be one of the few he won’t regret it.

Life goes on like this and once again, Stray Kids surprise and reassure Minho by staying together.

Jisung does that too, his presence bringing Minho warmth and comfort he never thought he needed before, but now the lack of it whenever they’re apart is like something tangible, an empty space beside him that _should_ be filled.

Jisung is just _Jisung_. There’s no better way to describe him. As days turn into weeks, Minho’s taken aback by how the younger seems to be genuinely happy when they spend time together. It’s the first time anyone’s ever done that and more often than not Minho finds himself at a loss of how to react to Jisung’s clinginess and touchiness, but it doesn’t mean he’s not enjoying it.

He lo-

He likes it.

Minho likes it all, likes this weird unexpected insanity his life has become since Stray Kids met. Oftentimes, there’s a smile tugging at his lips as he watches the other eight playing around and laughing and although he still forces his down, he thinks it won’t take long before he stops being afraid of showing it to them. Somehow, as ridiculous and stupid the thought is, he starts to lose his scepticism and believe they’ll be like this forever.

It’s not impossible, right?

The days pass and Minho attends his classes and finishes all his assignments. During his free time, he goes on dates with Jisung and gets to know their group even better, meeting up with them as often as possible. They turn from casual friends to a group of people who know each other through and through and even though there are fights and misunderstandings along the way they always make up and their bond only gets stronger.

Some things are more memorable than others, but overall – life simply goes on.

Among the more memorable bits, there’s the showcase thing, of course. It’s the first time Minho acknowledges he does something he’d never even consider doing before Stray Kids happened.

The showcases in their university happen twice a year – in autumn and spring. Minho’s heard that they were organised in the first place because something bad, that he never got the details of, happened during the summer festival. The dean banned the festival, but because of the strong tradition, he worked out with the students an alternative, where two smaller shows would be held annually. There, anyone could sing, dance or do what they wanted on stage, as long as they passed the auditions.

Minho has been performing in the showcase ever since he started attending university. The dance team always does one way or another – you can dance by yourself or in a self-constructed group and the rest just automatically become a team. Minho never wanted much attention, so he always defaulted to the last, easiest option, but this time something prompts him (more like someone with big eyes and puffy cheeks bugs him about it until he caves in) to audition by himself. He doesn’t expect much, because the competition for a solo stage is fierce and only a few can get it, but somehow, he passes.

It’s the morning of the day before the showcase when Minho turns off his song, leaves the studio to go pick up Felix and Hyunjin from their last rehearsal. The two are performing with their dance team as usual and they agreed to go for coffee as a trio and take a break from the constant practice. There’s a rare spring to his steps as he walks to the venue the showcase will be held in, because as nervous as he is, Minho’s also very excited. They say scouts also attend the shows and although it’s very improbable someone will approach him afterwards and it’d be very dumb to accept when he’s less than a semester away from getting his degree, but… A man can dream.

Recently, Minho realised that maybe dreaming is not as awful as he used to believe.

His good mood doesn’t last long though. He finds Hyunjin and Felix still in the locker room, but they’re not changing, and the atmosphere feels sombre. Although the room is empty expect for the two, Felix sits on the floor in the corner, hugging his knees and hiding his face, and Minho only recognises him because of his orange hair. Hyunjin is leaning on the lockers opposite of the door and his face is a picture of pure unadulterated anger, his eyes closed and his fists clenched at his side.

Confused, Minho tries to think about what could put them in such a bad mood. Did they have a fight? “What happened?” he breaks the silence.

Minho flinches when a bang echoes in the silence. It’s the sound of Hyunjin’s fist connecting with some locker’s door and Minho freezes at the uncharacteristic behaviour. The dark-haired boy is fuming, and Minho has no idea _why_, but then the younger opens his eyes and- “They said Felix couldn’t perform.”

“What?!” Minho’s eyes dart between Hyunjin’s angry expression and Felix curled into a tight ball on the floor.

Felix lets out a quiet sigh. “Sorry, hyung. It’s my fault,” his voice wavers and although Minho can’t see his face, it’s clear the younger is trying hard not to cry.

“What happened?” he asks, trying to alleviate his own agitation, making his voice softer as he walks closer to Felix. He doesn’t want to make him burst into tears, but he feels like he should somehow comfort the younger. He’s his hyung after all. He pats Felix’s hair once, twice, but it feels incredibly awkward so he stops, hoping just sitting by him will help. When a few moments pass and the Australian still doesn’t say anything more, Minho turns to his questioning gaze back to Hyunjin.

The black-haired boy sighs. “We were having the last run-through and unknown to us there was a member of the Board watching. We have that hoverboard move, you know?” Hyunjin waits for Minho’s nod before continuing. “Felix’s the only person who can do it, but he lost his balance and fell this time. The guy got really angry and said that if weren’t going to perform properly we shouldn’t even show up. He told us Felix can’t dance during the showcase and the guys just- They just nodded! Hyung, I got so mad, but Felix held me back and no one even protested. How could they simply agree to discard him like that? We made this choreography together and he made one mistake.”

Oh. A member of the Board might not officially have authority to break up a team, but Minho’s heard of them doing it in the past. Although it usually happened during auditions and not so close to the showcase itself… Since the Board is in charge of choosing the performers, no one ever stands up to them.

Hyunjin straightens his back. He seems more calm- No, that’s not right. He looks less volatile, but the fire in his irises doesn’t lose strength. “Don’t worry, Lix. I’m not going to perform either,” he says.

This makes Felix finally raise his head. His eyes are red and puffy, but there’s a rare for Felix anger in them at Hyunjin’s words. “What? Jinnie, you can’t! We worked so hard to perform this time. Even if I can’t, you should still dance!”

Hyunijn scoffs and Minho thinks he’s never seen this side of the younger. Hyunjin loves to exaggerate his reactions and acts like a dramatic queen often, but the calm, collected expression and the fury burning in his eyes is something new. He never realised how loyal Hyunjin can be and as awful as this whole situation is, Minho wants to smile fondly.

“Dance? With them? No, thank you. If they can accept one less person in the choreography so easily, they can deal without two.”

Minho winces at that, because even though he understands Hyunjin’s anger, he can also kind of get why no one protested. The Board is made of the uni’s lecturers and angering your professor is never a good idea. Not to mention, if one member of the Board is against you, you’ll probably never get into the showcase again and it _is_ a prestigious event that can kickstart your career. He’s going to have to talk to Hyunjin about it later, but for now there are more pressing matters. Felix’s saying something again, but Minho stops listening as his mind _whirls_.

He looks at the clock on the wall. 12:07. Less than 26 hours till the start of the showcase. 27 till the dance team is supposed to perform. 28 hours and 38 minutes till Minho’s own slot.

Honestly, there is not much they can do. Had there been more time, maybe they could’ve tried to reason with the Board. Their dance teacher is a member. Minho’s math professor for some unknown reason belongs to it too and she likes Minho, so if he asked, she’d put in a good word for him. With 26 hours left… There’s no way.

There’s no way… Unless-

Is he seriously considering this?

No. This is a stupid idea. It’ll never work out. They’ll just end up angering the Board. Maybe they’ll even get suspended. It’s not even like they’ve known each other for that long. Why is he even considering this? But then Minho looks at Felix and his wet cheeks and his lithe body wracked with sobs and at Hynjin’s tense shoulders and his burning gaze and realizes that these doubts are just wasting their precious time because he’s already decided.

“Wait here,” he interrupts whatever Hyunjin had been saying and ignores the tentative ‘hyung?’ from Felix as he storms out of the room, already dialling a number he knows by heart. He paces the hallways as he listens to the signal and doesn’t even let the other person greet him before speaking.

“Do you know who’s in charge of the music this showcase?”

“What?” the other speaker splutters, confused, but recovers quickly. “I think it’s Jason. Well, Byeongkwan is his Korean name. Why do you ask, Minho-yah?”

“Are you close with him, hyung?” Chan, even though he never belonged to the ‘popular’ crowd, is the kind of person who has friends everywhere. Minho remembers how shocked he’d been by that during their trip, when they’d shared funny stories from their classes and Chan would offhandedly mention he’s heard all the stories already. He just seems to know everyone. And even though he’d already graduated, he’s Minho’s only chance if he wants this idea to work.

Chan sighs when it becomes apparent Minho’s not planning to answer his question but responds. “Yeah, I guess. We used to train together a long time ago and we haven’t spoken that much lately, but I still consider him my friend. Why? Do you need something from him?”

Minho feels slight relief, but he doesn’t let it bloom because he still doesn’t know if he’ll succeed. “Yes, I do. Could he… Would it be possible for him to change a performer’s music right before the showcase?”

“Well, he shouldn’t, now that’s everything finalised and after the Board screened the pieces to see if they’re appropriate. But…” Minho almost holds his breath when Chan breaks off. “How important is it?”

_How important is it_? Minho doesn’t know. It shouldn’t be that important. Minho can be putting his own future on the line for two boys he only got to know a few months ago, but when he recalls their anger and pain his chest _burns_.

“Very important, hyung,” he answers simply.

Chan sighs, but Minho grins because he can hear the elder’s smile in his next words. “Then alright. I’ll talk to him. Sometimes devices can malfunction and sometimes computers can weirdly delete one performer’s track. Get me an USB with your track tomorrow before the showcase and I’ll make sure it’ll get played.”

He tries to school down his expression into something more neutral, because seriously, what’s he so happy for? “Thanks, hyung.”

Chan laughs and Minho can almost see him shaking his head at the weird request. “I have no idea why you’re doing this, but I think I’ll find out soon enough. Your stage better be amazing, okay?”

“It’s a given, hyung. It’s my performance after all.” Chan just giggles some more in lieu of an answer. “I’m looking to the 3RACHA stage too.” It took some persuasion, because technically non-students weren’t allowed to perform, but 3RACHA has been a regular since it was formed, so the Board ‘benevolently’ allowed Chan to join the two actual students of their group.

“Oh, right. I almost forgot about it. Weird to perform after my graduation. But they let Nari accompany Jeongin and Seungmin as well, so at least I’m not going to stand out as much.”

That was true. The choir director loved Nari so much she pulled some strings and got the permission for her to perform. Jisung quickly proclaimed it was because she had a huge crush on her and Nari denied, but it’s become a running gag in the group since then that Minho recalls now with a giggle. “You’re the Board’s favourite couple.”

“Yeah, right. I feel like they only let 3RACHA perform because me and her are a straight couple, I saw how they look at Bin and Sung. Too many old conservative professors who never think twice of the talent when they’re being homophobic.” Chan sighs and his voice suddenly sounds very tired. Minho chooses not to ask. “But I have to go now, so see you tomorrow, Minho-yah.”

Minho says his goodbyes and hangs up. When he walks back into the room, he finds Hyunjin sitting next to Felix with his arms wrapped tightly around the younger. They both seem to have calmed down considerably and Minho lets out a breath, grateful. They need to get as much practice as they can and he’s not the best at comforting.

The clock reads 12:22. Not much time left, but if they hurry, they’ll be fine.

They can do this and they _will_.

“Hyung? What happened?” It’s Felix that notices his return first, his red eyes looking even bigger than usual as they’re trained on Minho’s silhouette.

Minho walks to their lockers, takes their bags out and only then turns to answer. “Get up. We need to practice for tomorrow.”

Hyunjin frowns at him. “Practice? Why? I already said I’m not performing with the group.”

“Well then, you’re lucky because I’m not telling you to.” Minho comes closer and switches the bags to one hand so he can use the other to pull Hyunjin up. The black haired boy is still frowning but reluctantly stands. “You two still remember that dance we choreographed as a trio, right?”

“The one we started making a few weeks ago?” Felix answers, his face a picture of confusion, but he too accepts Minho’s hand and gets up.

Hyunjin grabs his bag from Minho and tightens his fingers around the straps. “We can’t perform it though. We didn’t audition with it, so we don’t have a slot.”

“We didn’t. But I do have a slot,” Minho cannot help the cocky grin he sends the two before he walks to open the door for them. When he turns back, they’re still standing there in silence, their mouths open like fish.

Felix finds his voice earlier. “But hyung- You can’t! That’s you solo slot,” he stumbles over his words, his accent thick and his voice doing that weird thing where it goes from very low to high. It happens every time his emotions run high and some of the agitation in Minho settles, because giving someone like Felix a chance feels _right_. How can someone look at the boy and even think he’s not enough?

“Maybe I can’t, but I’m doing it anyways,” Minho shrugs and gestures for them to leave. “After you. I reserved studio number 9.”

The final performance… It’s good. It’s completely different from what he had planned on dancing by himself, but the choreography is very much _them_, combining their different styles into one entity. It’s also raw, mostly because they simply don’t have time to polish it, but Minho likes it. It’s one of his few choreographies he’s very proud of. And Felix and Hyunjin positively radiate happiness when they get a standing ovation afterwards, so… The shocked faces of the members of the Board when they start are just a bonus.

Minho never regrets it.

It’s not that there aren’t any repercussions. Thankfully, they’re not thrown out and Minho succeeds in keeping the suspension just for himself, convincing the Board it was all his idea (which, to be fair, it was). This way, Felix and Hyunjin get off with a warning and Minho gets two weeks of vacation, is what he tells them. Thankfully, the youngsters don’t realize then that because of that, Minho will miss one too many classes of his most important subject and subsequently, he’ll fail it. Nari knows and her brows are furrowed, but Minho himself doesn’t worry about it too much. Instead of graduating now, he’ll just have to stay for another semester. He’s never been very eager to start looking for a job, so he doesn’t mind. Besides, Jisung will still be here as well.

Well, that’s that. There are many more memorable bits, like the time they all go to an amusement park or the many trips to the karaoke, but overall days pass a lot quicker than they used to when Minho has suddenly eight other people to occupy his time. Everything becomes a haze of laughter and smiles and get-togethers, so different from the life he led before.

He’s happy though. Very happy.

And Jisung’s there. Jisung, with his incessant energy and big smiles. With how he stuffs his cheeks with food whenever he eats. With his love for cheesecake and americanos. He’s touchy and emotional and sensitive and it still… Becomes a bit too much at times. Minho’s lived his life hiding his feelings deep inside his chest and keeping people at a distance, so it’s hard to open himself up and often he simply lets Jisung hang all over him.

It’s only at night, when he looks at the younger’s sleeping form curled up next to him that he allows himself to reach out and pat his hair and whisper words that he’s still not ready to say in the light of the day. He can only hope what they have now will be enough until the day Minho learns how to stop jumping from his indifferent persona to his flirty one.

It has to be enough. It… It _has to_.

Oh. And speaking of Jisung. There’s also that one day, more special than any other, simply because of its’ reminder that stays in Minho’s apartment afterwards and takes a liking to hogging his bed.

It happens in November, not long after the first snow had fallen. Him and Jisung are heading to his apartment from a movie date when they hear a meowing from a side alley. It’s a drawn out, miserable sound and they look at each other wordlessly before heading to check it out.

It’s a kitten. A small grey thing in a cardboard box left abandoned in an alley. It’s shaking from the cold and Minho doesn’t hesitate before picking it up and putting it inside his coat, trying to warm it up. They take it home because it’s too late to look for help and spend the night not sleeping, but cleaning, feeding and fretting over the animal instead.

It’s the first night they ever spend together and Minho’s a young man with a healthy sex drive, but he thinks seeing Jisung like this, rocking and petting the cat with a gentle smile on his face in an attempt to put it to sleep, is so much better than any other alternative.

The next morning when they take the kitten to the vet, they’re told that it’s just a few days old and besides having stayed outside for some time, it seems quite healthy. Jisung’s relief is almost palpable and he spends the rest of the visit playing with the animal, leaving Minho to talk with the doctor.

“We can put it up for adoption. It’s still a kitten and there are many children who want pets, so it’ll probably find a home soon,” the vet grins at him and clasps a hand on Minho’s shoulder. He thanked them earlier already, saying that he’s seen too many animals die because they’ve been abandoned and Minho smiles back politely before turning around to call for Jisung.

The cat is still on the examination table, but this doesn’t seem to deter the younger, who has given him his right hand to play with. The kitten is already so much more energetic than the day before, wriggling around as he tries to playfully scratch and bite Jisung’s fingers and the boy is giggling, his face almost radiating warmth and happiness.

“I’ll take care of it,” Minho tells the doctor. The man raises an eyebrow at the sudden decision, but he doesn’t protest. Maybe it’s because Minho’s told him about all the pets he had as a child or maybe he can see the determination in Minho’s eyes, the burning desire to protect the two by the examination table with all his might. Whatever. It simply happens. Minho signs the papers quickly and it’s done.

Boom. He has his own cat now.

Still, raising a kitten is a huge responsibility and he almost regrets it as soon as they leave, already fretting about expenses and his landlord, and _oh god, he lives alone, what if something happens when he’s in class_, but Jisung’s excited chattering and his big smile banish traces of doubts from his mind.

It’ll be fine. He can do this with Jisung’s help, because of course he won’t leave Minho alone.

The next few days are chaotic, filled with buying supplies and helping the kitten settle in Minho’s small apartment. They can’t decide on a name at first, but in the end Jisung gets what he wants as usual and the feline is named Dori, in honour of Jisung’s favourite character from a Disney movie he saw once as a child.

Days later, when Minho is sitting on the couch, watching Jisung play with the kitten on his living room’s floor, something warm and funny blooms in his chest for the first time in his life. He doesn’t know what it means but it seems _right_. Like it should be there. It also feels important and massive and Minho’s breath hitches and his heart stutters, but Jisung’s too absorbed to notice and he chooses that moment to whine for Minho to help him unlodge the cat’s claws from his sleeve.

Minho shakes his head and complains for the sake of complaining, but he joins the younger on the floor. He’ll think about that weird feeling on another time.

Life goes on.

It’s perfect. As everything in Minho’s life, it doesn’t last long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For people who have come here for the angsty tags - don't worry. It's coming.


	4. 梁 [ bridge ]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growth

Jisung’s mother falls sick at the end of the year. Minho worries and tries his hardest to smooth out the wrinkles that adorn the younger’s face during this time with jokes and playful escapades. She recovers quickly, but it’s clear her health had suffered and Jisung tells him not to worry, but Minho can’t, because he’s starting to feel Jisung’s ribs again like he hadn’t in months.

It’s not a nice feeling. Helplessness. It’s the type of the lack of control Minho learns he hates the most, despises how his jokes and flirting doesn’t bring the same old bright smile to Jisung’s smile anymore.

So Minho learns how to cook. It may not be the solution, but he doesn’t know what else to do. If he can keep making tasty dishes for Jisung without burning the kitchen down, then at least the younger will maybe gain a few pounds. One thing at a time. It’s progress.

Days pass like this and maybe fate’s trying to tell him something because he is suddenly so incredibly busy, he rarely has time to meet up with Jisung, let alone take the other out on dates to cheer him up. When they manage to hang out, Minho’s often too tired to go anywhere so they just stay in and watch TV and he still falls asleep halfway through the movie.

It used to be enough, but somehow the previously comfortable silence turns stifling. Jisung barely talks and Minho finds himself unable to breach any topics besides classes. He doesn’t know why and he doesn’t have time to wonder about it, but it simply feels wrong. At night, he tosses and turns, unable to fall asleep. It gets so bad Chan offers him his sleeping pills to ‘help with the school stress’, but Minho declines because he knows uni is not the cause.

He’s terrified of something else completely. It doesn’t help that he has no idea why.

He doesn’t ask Nari for help, but the older knows him well enough to realise he’d never do that, so she just corners Minho one day when he’s walking home from class.

“You need to talk with him, honestly. Tell him how you feel about him. I’m not sure if you’ve realized but you can be very ambiguous when it comes to feelings,” Nari says, her voice soft before she leaves Minho alone.

And Minho knows. Probably better than anyone, because he’s always been like this. Maybe it’s because of his dad, who is the stereotypical stern Korean man. Maybe it’s because of his mom, who always held more affection for their animals than for her children. Maybe it’s all his insecurities that he learned to hide behind a façade of easy-going confidence. He doesn’t know and he ignores the nagging need to maybe do something about it, choosing to continue as he had and hope that the sharp corners of his personality will go unnoticed and hurt no one but himself.

Ignoring his problems until they go away worked before ad Minho’s always been too weak (too _afraid_) to ignore the sweet pull of escapism.

So he just keeps cooking, helping in other small things that Jisung won’t notice, praying the younger would come to him on his own and talk. The way it used to be. He almost convinces himself that it’s working, because Jisung’s old fire comes back to his eyes and it’s too late by the time Minho realizes that the determination he saw in those irises had to do with something else entirely.

In the end, hoping might’ve just made the matters worse because it never changed anything.

On that fateful February day, Jisung asks him to come out to talk. It’s snowing, small petals falling onto their hair and sitting on their noses. Jisung’s face is as hard as stone and it might be the most serious he’s ever seen the younger.

“I need to go back to my parents to Malaysia. I’m taking a break from college.”

The connotations are obvious and Jisung’s tone final, but Minho still clings to the last bits of hope and smiles, trying to look unbothered and dismissive. “Oh, sure. I’ll wait here for you.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back, hyung… If I’ll be back.” Jisung’s standing underneath a light post and the soft glow colours his hair yellow and it reminds Minho of the sand on Busan’s beaches in the summer. It is the same pale shade they sat on at night and watched the stars together, talking about everything and anything, back before the confession, back when they were still only Jisung and Minho – the best friends and partners in crime, even though they barely knew each other.

Back when they stupidly believed they had forever to learn about the other.

Minho takes a deep breath and smoothens out his voice the way he likes to iron his clothes. He doesn’t want it to break the way he himself is now. “Okay. We can text. And call. People do long distance often, right?”

Jisung sends him a look of disbelief and Minho’s not surprised – he’s always been the first to say that long distance relationships never work out. He’s never had much faith in love in general – more in how crushes led to life-long commitments in which people stayed because it was easier, more comfortable. Now, all these doubts seem to float above his head and laugh down at him, because of course. _Of course_. He’s always right in the end.

His head is pounding.

The younger sighs. “No, hyung. Please don’t try to text or call. I want- I want this to be a clean break.”

Minho giggles and wonders if Jisung can hear as clearly as he himself hears, that it’s borderline hysterical. He’s so close to breaking he can almost see the cracks forming in real time, the crevices forming in his skin and unearthing the darkness he hid underneath. Minho curls his hands into fists, digging his fingers into the flesh of his palms. “You don’t mean it, right?”

“I do,” Jisung’s voice is quiet, but strong, no shred of doubt or weakness for Minho to grasp with his trembling fingers. It’s final. The younger’s gaze is dark and cold, so cold, so much worse than the chill of the air and Minho shudders. “I guess this is goodbye then, hyung. Take care.”

Jisung turns and heads down the street in the direction of his dorms. His silhouette is a dark shape against the white of the snow and Minho should yell after him, try to talk him out of this or at least bid him goodbye with dignity, but he finds that maybe in all this time nothing had changed, because the fear to move is all too familiar in his gut and his lips remain shut.

In the end, Minho can only watch everything fall apart. That’s the way it’s always been.

Jisung is gone the next day. He must’ve arranged his leave ahead, because the uni seems well informed and no one questions his absence. Their friends try to act normally and don’t ask about it either and Minho figures out that Jisung’s must’ve told them himself. An ugly twisted thing settles in his chest and whispers that maybe he announced it a long time ago and chose not to tell just Minho or that he probably only cut Minho off, but he squashes it before it can surface. His friends don’t deserve him thinking that.

Life goes on.

He goes to all his classes and dance competitions. The days look greyer and duller, but Minho blames it on the weather – it’s become warm enough lately for the snow to melt into a mushy puddle, but not disappear completely and the sky is constantly cloudy. The closet to the left of Minho’s bed, the one he once emptied for Jisung to have a place for clothes to change into whenever he stayed over, stays closed. His things are probably still there, because Minho would’ve most likely noticed him taking out a huge pile of clothes, but he doesn’t check. He just… doesn’t do a lot these days.

It’s fine. He hasn’t missed any classes, turned in all his assignments. He’s an adult. He can deal with a breakup.

Their friends (his friends, he should relearn to call them that) stage an intervention a few weeks after Jisung’s departure. Nari asks him to come help with her plants and when he goes, he finds the other six waiting in the apartment as well. Eight people in one room is a lot, but the one empty spot in between them feels so suffocating that Minho can barely hear what they’re saying through the ringing in his ears. In the end, he tells them he just needs space for a while, that he’ll talk to them when he’s ready, and his friends, the ones who could never listen to him, actually agree and disperse without a word.

On that evening, Minho walks home by himself half grateful for them giving him space and half convinced that maybe they were never real friends in the first place, if it’s so easy for them to leave like this.

Life goes on.

One day his phone pings with a notification. It’s a reminder that Nari’s birthday is coming in two weeks and Minho starts laughing so hard tears show up in his eyes, which soon turns into ugly sobbing because he realises that a year ago, he didn’t even know Jisung existed and now just being without him is painful. The breakdown lasts a few minutes, but he recovers quickly, thanking that he is alone in his apartment.

That will be the last time he lets himself break down like this, Minho promises himself.

The free time he gets he spends in a sort of a limbo, with a purring Dori on his lap. He mostly remembers and thinks about his childhood because this is the only thing that doesn’t hurt as much these days.

Minho has a memory, from when he was about ten. He had been helping his mother clean the house, like usual, when _it_ happened. He was carrying some old vase through their hallway when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He flinched harshly, startled, his hands raising as if to protect his face before he realised that it was just his reflection in the mirror. It was quiet for one, two seconds and all Minho could feel was amusement as he stared at himself, a rare moment when his irrational fear did not bring shame, but silent laughter and childish joy.

Then, the vase crashed into the floor and broke into million tiny pieces.

Maybe it's weird, but it’s one of the clearest memories he has. He used it as a metaphor of his life a lot of times before, but somehow his relationship with Jisung felt exactly like that moment, making all his earlier comparisons seem laughable. Their relationship was like a breath of fresh air, a single moment when he could laugh and maybe even thought he would come to terms with his fears and insecurities one day. A few seconds of bliss, before reality caught up to him and everything shattered into small pieces. It leaves him more bitter that sad, disappointed in himself because he should've realised, should’ve known better by now.

If you let go, it's inevitable that a crash will follow.

This time there is no yelling from his mother, no yelling at all. Maybe there would've been, if Minho still met up with their group, but he doesn’t, so he’s just left with silence broken only by quiet meows from time to time. People always said Jisung was loud and Minho agreed, but he didn’t know earlier that the quiet that’s left after everything could be so much more deafening.

Life goes on.

He gets rejected for the showcase. That was his last chance and maybe even though he stopped believing that he'd get casted by some company who would hire him immediately, a part of him still wanted to prove he had a chance.

He doesn't. They tell him they're looking for a different style than his, so he just bows and leaves. It’s not hard to read between the lines and see in their self-satisfied smirks they still remember how he went against them in the last showcase. It’s only natural they won’t let him be a part of it this time.

As he trudges home, he's glad he ended up telling no one what his audition date was. Before the Jisung clusterfuck he didn't even know and afterwards the only person he still talked to semi-regularly and could tell was Nari, but recently they only speak about safe topics, like the weather, Minho’s grades or Nari’s jobs.

When he finally gets to his small apartment, it's quiet. Dori is probably sleeping soundly, unaware of her master’s tears and his failed dreams.

Well, no, he doesn’t cry. But as he lies alone in his bed, he does feel something break inside him even though he was sure before there was nothing intact left there. Maybe it’s the cold realisation he refused to accept before that dancing will take him nowhere. Maybe it’s the knowledge that he hates his major, the major that will have to become his job in the near future.

Maybe it’s just that he’s finally realised that it might’ve been only Jisung that left, but it had been Stray Kids that had been lost forever.

Minho’s phone is dark and quiet, and he would’ve noticed something, but he still checks and- Yes. The last message in the groupchat is from the day before the breakup. No one has written anything since then and it could’ve been that they simply started a new groupchat without Jisung and never added Minho, but he’s not blind. He still attends the uni and he knows the other’s schedules enough to notice the lack of the rowdy group in the corner of the cafeteria during Thursday’s lunch, when their breaks line up. He’s seen Jeongin hanging out with same-aged friends on campus when before, he’d always been with someone from the group. He’s spotted Seungmin spending all his time in the library, the way he used to before that summer. During their dance classes neither Felix nor Hyunjin approach him anymore, but they don’t talk to each other much either.

Stray Kids are truly, unmistakably gone.

Nine or none, they had joked when restaurant owners sighed at their need to connect the tables, but in the end, it had been true all along. If they can’t be nine, they just… aren’t.

Minho quits the dance club. He apologizes and tells their instructor he doesn’t have time for it anymore. The man is frowning, but he lets him leave without a word. It _is_ Minho’s last semester after all. He should be fucking studying, not chasing after feeble dreams that will get him nowhere.

He watches as the vase shatters and the pieces scatter all over the floor.

He keeps going to university and spends the rest of his time going through job offers and attending job interviews. Mostly they dismiss him because he doesn’t have any experience and he smiles politely as he grits his teeth, because he needs to find a job first to gain some.

There is a morning when he even forgets to feed his Dori. He leaves for class and another interview and comes back in the late afternoon and she’s meowing, her bowl licked clean. When he realizes what happened, he falls to his knees, uncaring of his perfectly ironed dress shirt and pants and takes the kitten into his arms, apologies spilling from his lips. He keeps petting her even as she wolfs down the food after he refills her bowl.

It's just another one of his many failures, isn’t it?

He graduates and doesn’t really look back. He’s still somewhat friends with Nari although their past closeness is completely gone and from time to time someone else from the ‘Stray Kids’ group chat sends him a text, but it’s stilted and tense. They don’t know how to talk to him, and he doesn’t know how to answer them anymore.

There are times, when he’s tired and angry and hopeless after another seemingly pointless day, and he wonders if they knew. Jisung must’ve made arrangements in advance and even if he kept it a secret from Minho, he couldn’t have hidden it from everyone. If so, how come no one told him? Did they all know Jisung was going to break up with him before it happened?

Did they ever even care about him?

_Shhh_, Minho thinks whenever that ugly spiteful monster rears its head. He doesn’t seem to know his friends quite as well as he thought he had and he hasn’t seen any of them properly in months, but that’s no excuse. _Shhh_, he simply repeats to himself.

Finally, one interview proves fruitful. It’s not a great job, but it seems quite stable. A good beginning. The manager seems impressed with his grades, and for some reason mentions it in front of the whole office, so he doesn’t gain favour quickly, but it’s fine. Even though he supposedly works from 9 to 5, he keeps doing overtime and coming home at midnight, exhausted, but it’s okay. This is what being an adult is like, with days blurring into months where nothing changes. This is what real life looks like.

He gets better, bit by bit. He discovers that if he focuses on his job hard enough, he can detach himself from the pain, dim it into something more manageable. There’s so much work to do, so many hours of overtime it’s almost easy to slip into this indifferent state. He’s just too busy to even think about questioning how he feels.

_You’re dissociating_, a voice that sounds like Seungmin whispers in his head, but he ignores it. At least now, he can socialize again without feeling like throwing up every time.

Every few weeks he even manages to find enough time and energy to meet up with Nari. He learns bits and pieces about their little group’s lives from her. He doesn’t talk to them almost at all anymore, aside from maybe checking up on Jeongin once a month, because that boy still wakes some motherly instincts inside of them. It’s through Nari he hears about Seungmin getting a position in a prestigious, well-known law firm even before finishing school, about Felix and Hyunjin uploading dance covers onto Youtube, about Chan leaving for Australia.

Maybe if he were in a better place, he’d ask how Nari is doing after he hears the last piece of news, but his heart hurts too much whenever he thinks about farewells and the two seem to be in a long-distance relationship anyways, so he doesn’t.

Life goes on.

One day in February, as he's heading home from work, he gets a call from an unknown number. It's only after he says hello and there's a few seconds of silence that it hits him that this could be Jisung. Jisung back in Korea after a whole year, with a new number. Jisung calling to ask him to meet and catch up. He freezes and the only thing he can hear for a moment is the loud thumping of his heart against his ribs before the caller speaks.

It's not. It's not Jisung. It's one of Minho’s friends from the dance team, one he hasn’t contacted since he quit. It’s a nice surprise – they met in Minho’s first year, when they auditioned for the team on the same day. They were never great friends, but they had an easy comradery that Minho looks back on fondly.

There’s an audition. Some entertainment company is looking for backup dancers for their kpop group’s tour. It’s supposedly a massive project that will take almost year, starting with training in Korea, then the tour itself – first both Americas, Europe then a short break followed by some stops in Asia and even two in Australia. Minho’s friend wants to go, but he doesn’t want to go alone. He asks if Minho could join him.

By that time, Minho’s reached his home. It’s quiet and dark, no one to greet him when he comes through the door and a grown-up decision would probably be to at least ask for some time to think it through. That’s what he should do. He already has a stable job with a decent pay that people struggle to find. Minho knows it. But Dori’s just a cat, the texts with Nari have been lukewarm at most recently and he hasn’t seen any of his other friends face to face for months now.

Minho spent most of his life trying to be a grown-up and responsible version of himself and he’s simply so so _tired_ of it. And lonely.

He says yes.

Somehow, he gets in. His friend doesn’t, they say he’s talented but too tall, but he’s not spiteful. He just claps Minho on the back and wishes him good luck.

Being a backup dancer is… both over and underwhelming. He’s suddenly thrust into a world where he’s expected to have the choreography down and perfect in mere hours, but there’s also much more free time and friendly excursions with the other dancers than he expected. The work’s hard, especially since Minho quit dancing regularly over a year before, but his body seems to remember how to dance even if his mind doesn’t.

Idols are nice. They’re good people. They’re not friends with the dancers, but they all spend enough hours sweating together in a small room to become more that just co-workers. There, under the harsh fluorescent lights the lines blur and sometimes Minho even forgets that the boys in front of him are not just regular teammates of his as he jokes around and laughs with them. But then, the practice ends, and they’re whisked away to a makeup shop and interviews and Minho stays and gets a drink in a rundown bar with the other dancers.

He spends some nights in the beginning, when they’re preparing for the world tour Minho is supposed to follow them on, thinking about what it would be like to be an idol. Maybe that’s what makes that old weird dream of his come back and his dreams are filled with discussing their songs with 3RACHA and practicing for concerts as nine. The images are blurry by the time Minho awakens, but when he’s asleep it feels realer than reality. Felix wiping off his foundation so that the fans can see his beautiful freckles. Jeongin’s aegyo that everyone, even some random MCs coo over. Everyone fawning over Hyunjin’s visuals. Chan’s dark circles even when he laughs and hugs Changbin, teasing the younger because of his clumsiness. Nari and Seungmin practising songs in the car. Jisung crying when they get their first win on some music show.

Jisung crying? He’s never seen Jisung cry.

But he banishes the stray thoughts, because dancing is fun and all, but it’s also incredibly exhausting. He’s never been as careful when he walks down the stairs as now, because never before a simple fall could potentially end his whole career. The days spent on practice leave him bone-tired, but sated, like he just ate a hearty meal and he leaves the rare nights when he’s not utterly exhausted to his dreams about singing and dancing on his own stage and fans with banners spelling ‘Lee Minho’.

Then, one of the idols faints from exhaustion and Minho feels glad he never ended up following this path and that none of his friends did as well.

Life goes on.

Nari is the only one who knows he’s leaving the country and Minho’s glad. He asked her not to mention it to any of the others if they asked. This way it’s easy to leave, because Nari can’t take the day off so there’s no one to see him off at the airport. The dancer he ends up sitting next to during the flight to Santiago is a funny, amicable guy with a good sense of humour. Somehow, he reminds Minho of Felix. He has the kind of calming and kind presence that relaxes you. It helps a lot, along with how he lets Minho hold his hand, because flying is just as terrifying as he’d imagined and thinking about how he’ll only be back after half a year does nothing but aggravate the fear.

The only thing Minho remembers from the first few concerts is the heat. The dancers keep cursing whoever thought it would be a good idea to start the tour in South America in the beginning of summer, but it’s the idols who have it the worst. Minho doesn’t know how they do it, how they don’t faint right there on stage. It earns them a new respect in Minho’s eyes.

Life goes on.

The flights are long and exhausting and Minho can’t even imagine what it’s like for the idols who have interviews and other idol related stuff to attend to as well. The dancers usually come to the city a day before, so they don’t have to deal with the fangirl crowd, so they have one thing less to worry about. It’s to give the other staff time to check the venue, but for Minho it’s usually the only break he gets to have so he usually spends it sleeping in his hotel room.

Two months into the tour, not long after arriving in the States, Hyunjin calls him.

“Hyung!”

“What?” Minho asks, surprised. He didn’t look at his phone before picking up, thinking it’s just one of the dancers wanting him to come back from their break earlier to maybe help him with his steps.

“Hyung! I saw you!” Hyunjin’s voice sounds different, distorted by the distance and time, but it’s still so so familiar.

Minho gulps as his heartbeat picks up. He blames it on being alone in a foreign country, but deep down he knows the sudden anxiety has to do with something else. “What do you mean?”

“I was watching fancams on Youtube and- That was you, right? You’re one of the backup dancers of that huge group?”

Minho winces. Nari knows where he is, but as far as Minho knows, the elder never fully explained it to anyone else, choosing instead to say he’s away on business because of his job. Which fair enough, is true, but also not really.

When Hyunjin speaks again his voice is a lot quieter. A bit accusatory, but mostly pained. Hyunjin had always been the most sensitive out of them all. “I didn’t even know you left!”

“Sorry, Jin. It was so short notice, I didn’t really manage to notify anyone,” the lie passes smoothly through his lips. Before the tour started, Minho had trained with the idols for a long enough time to tell everyone he knew if he wanted. And it’s not that he didn’t want them to know, but just… He wasn’t sure they wanted to know.

Stray Kids are gone. Doesn’t it mean their friendship is gone as well?

“Hyung-“ Hyunjin starts but Minho never finds out what he was planning to say because he interrupts him.

“Hyunjin-ah, I’m really sorry but we’re in the middle of practice and my break’s over. We’ll talk later, okay?”

“Sure,”

After Minho hangs up, he spends the remaining ten minutes of his break just staring at his phone, because he doesn’t actually have anything else to do. But he didn’t want to hear what Hyunjin had to ask him. He wouldn’t know how to answer him.

He’s- He’s not ready yet.

_Coward_, a voice whispers in the back of his mind and Minho can’t help but silently agree. He already knows he won’t call Hyunjin back.

Life goes on.

It’s the flight to Atlanta when Minho finally gets somewhat used to the feeling of flying that he’s able to do something. Unfortunately, he never brought a book, so he ends up just staring out of the window and letting his thoughts wander until suddenly, the image of Jisung crying comes back to him. It’s funny how it only hits him now, that small little fact. He’s heard from Chan that Jisung has always been an emotional person, the elder telling him multiple stories from before they met, but except a few fake-sobbing outbursts Jisung would sometimes jokingly put up, Minho has never seen the younger openly cry. Not really.

It’s a weird realization to have, especially when you’re miles above the ground. So Minho files it away for later and engages the dancer sitting next to him in a conversation.

Life goes on.

Europe is different than the States. It’s hard to pinpoint how exactly, but it’s not just the language or the culture. There’s just something about it that screams at him ‘Europe’ whenever he breathes in. Maybe it’s the same with every continent, but honestly, he can barely recall what South America looked like. The start of the tour had been so hard on his body he spent all of his free time just resting in his hotel room and it’s only now that he considers maybe sightseeing a bit. It’s not often you get to travel the world, after all.

It’s the beginning of September and they’re in Italy when homesickness nags at Minho more than usual. For some reason, Nari hasn’t called or texted these past few weeks – she’s probably busy – and even though their talks have been stilted for months now, the lack of it makes Minho lonelier than usual so he makes a split second decision and calls the only other one of his friends he thinks might actually want to talk to him.

“Hello?” asks a sleepy voice after three signals.

Minho breathes out slowly, taking in the voice he hadn’t heard in so long. “Hi, Jeongin. It’s Minho-hyung,”

“Hyung? Did something happen? It’s two am.”

Minho glances up at the hot afternoon sun and curses himself internally. “Two am? Shit, sorry Innie, I forget about time differences sometimes,” the nickname slips out unconsciously and Minho falters. Does still he have a right to call the younger so affectionately?

Jeongin just giggles sleepily before answering. “Oh. It’s fine, actually. I seem to have fallen asleep on my notes, so it’s good you woke me so I can go to bed,” he says and Minho hears a screech of a chair sliding across the floor.

Minho lets out a relieved breath. “Fallen asleep on your notes? That’s bad for you. You need to take care of yourself more. What would Nari-noona say if he heard that?” He shakes his head. It’s not like he was any better, but still…

“Nari-noona? Recently Nari-noona doesn’t really-” Jeongin’s voice disappears, drowned out by the rustling of material. He must be getting underneath the covers.

Minho waits for the noise to die down before speaking again, the smile on his face fond because there’s no one around to notice. “I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of your sheets.”

Jeongin giggles and it sounds weird, almost strained, but Minho reckons it’s probably because the connection is weak. “Well, whatever. Where are you know, hyung?”

“In Florence,” Minho answers as another group of tourists walk past him. It’s a family, parents with three children. The oldest daughter must’ve just told a joke or something because her younger brother, who looks about 10 years old is laughing loudly, his whole body shaking. He has short brown hair and big dark eyes and his cheeks are puffed up, because he still hasn’t lost any of his childhood fat. He almost looks like… A squirrel?

Minho shakes his head and forces himself to look away, listening to Jeongin’s answer as the family walks away. “Wow. Must be nice. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful city.”

“I can’t really see it through the sea of tourists everywhere, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Jeongin laughs again, but the jokes on him, because Minho is not exaggerating. The concert is in Milan, but the group is filming a reality show and they have something to do in Florence. Minho didn’t have to, but it was an option, so he decided to tag along and see a bit of Europe. He’ll probably never get another chance to.

It’s awful. The worst of the tourist season has supposedly finished, but the streets are still swarming with people with backpacks on their backs, snapping thousands of pictures with huge cameras. Not to mention that it’s so hot that Minho’s shirt is completely soaked through even though he doesn’t usually sweat that much. He regrets not staying with the dancers who decided to explore Bologna when they stopped in it for lunch earlier. It seemed much more peaceful than here.

“How have you been?” Minho asks trying to fan himself to alleviate the heat at least a little bit.

“Good. Uni’s been hard, but when is it easy?” They both giggle for a moment before Jeogin continues, his voice tired. “I’ve been well. Have you talked with Nari-hyung recently?”

Minho winces, because honestly, he could probably call. It’s just that he got used to just texting it would awkward so he just doesn’t. In the end… It’s simply his own fault he feels lonely. “No, I was really busy lately. The concerts have been almost back to back, we barely had time to sleep.”

“Oh… Then I guess you probably don’t know that Changbin-hyung opened his own tattoo shop?”

“What?” Minho feels his eyebrows rise in surprise.

Changbin… Him and Minho have always been very different. Their personalities couldn’t merge at all in the beginning, so their relationship was a bit distant at first, awkward. Minho cannot recall why, but there was a point when they decided they wanted to fix that and had a long deep conversation that became the reason Minho still considers Changbin as one of his closest friends, even if they’ve barely texted the last few months. He can’t really blame the younger – Changbin had known Jisung a lot longer and better than he had Minho.

But that’s not the point here – it was during that talk that they discussed their families and hopes for the future. Changbin never had a dream job, just like Minho, but he had something else – a fascination with tattoos. Not necessarily on himself, just in general and on that evening he told Minho he wanted to open a tattoo parlour one day.

“Yeah, he did. His parents aren’t very pleased, but he saved up enough money so he didn’t need to borrow anything from them. They’ll come around though, we all know how much they love Binnie-hyung.”

Minho whistles lowly. It’s not easy to save up a sum large enough to start a business. “That was fast.” Changbin must’ve worked really hard for that.

“Yes. And what a surprise - it seems like hyung’s actually talented. He’s completely booked for months, even though he didn’t open the shop that long ago.” Jeongin words it jokingly, but Minho knows the younger enough to hear the undercurrent of pride. Good. It’s nice to hear Changbin found something that makes him happy. “At least if I don’t find a job after I graduate, I can ask him to hire me. He can’t find enough staff and he’s super overworked. Hyunjin-hyung even offered to help him so he helps out whenever he has time.”

“Hyunjin? He shouldn’t neglect his education though. He’s graduating soon.”

“That’s what everyone tells him, but he just says not to worry. I wouldn’t worry about Seungmin-hyung, because he already has a position in that well-known law firm waiting for him when he graduates cause of his grades, but Hyunjin-hyung is not that smart,” the younger snorts at his own words.

“Yah! Respect your elders,” Minho scolds Jeongin, but his tone is light and playful. Jeongin just giggles in response.

“Sorry, hyung. But I’m only saying the truth,” the younger’s cocky tone is so familiar it almost brings Minho back to the past. But with Jeongin, unlike with Hyunjin, it’d be so easy to pretend nothing had changed. The boy’s stable like that, with a strength so different from Nari’s but so similar at the same time.

What would they do without their maknae?

Minho laughs again, quieter. Fonder. “Well, I can’t disagree with that,” he says and they fall into a comfortable silence again. It feels peaceful, in a way Minho forgot silence could feel.

It’s probably because it’s Jeongin.

Minho hears another rustle and he can almost see Jeongin curling up on his bed with his phone laying on the pillow. But maybe that’s not right – he’s heard from Nari their youngest decided to dye his hair some time ago and he never asked for a picture. How much has Jeongin changed in the time Minho’s been gone? How much has everyone else changed? “How are the concerts?” the younger asks softly, a yawn interrupting the sentence in the middle.

“They’re good. Always exhausting, but it’s rewarding. These idols are so popular though. You wouldn’t believe the queue in front of every venue we perform at. The fans can get overwhelming, and god, their screams are deafening. Plus the weather had been awful. It’s been hot recently, but autumn is near and we’re travelling to the North, so I heard it’s gonna get cooler soon. I really hope it’s true. And- Innie?” Minho asks and his suspicions are confirmed when he just hears a soft breath after a moment.

“Gosh, Innie. Falling asleep talking to a hyung? So impolite,” he laughs as he gets up, but he keeps his voice light and quiet so as to not wake the boy up. He should be heading back soon anyways. “Well. Goodnight, Innie. Sweet dreams.” Minho hangs up.

Life goes on.

Sometimes, when he can’t sleep, he thinks about summer nights when Nari would sing some bad rendition of a trendy pop song and he would dance to it under the blinking stars, back when they were still children. About Hyunjin’s dark eyes full of charisma that would monitor his every performance with a special kind of sharpness. About a giggly Felix teaching Seungmin girl group dances, the younger making fun of the Australian boy’s passion but at the same time singing all the lyrics flawlessly. About how sparkly Jeongin’s eyes got whenever they went to the karaoke and let him sing trot songs till his voice got hoarse. About 3RACHA posting their covers and original songs onto soundcloud tirelessly even when they only got 10 views.

Maybe everyone’s like this, with a kite woven out of their dreams in their hands. Some clutch it close to their heart and some let it fly. He used to be jealous of the second type, because he never had the courage to make dance more than a hobby no matter how much he loved it. Envious of Chan, Changbin and Jisung’s lack of fear that allowed them to follow their dreams.

Now, as he finally stands on the stage and dances, he realizes that maybe he made a mistake back then. 3RACHA wasn’t unafraid, because that feeling of anxiety never disappears. Minho is as afraid of failure as he had been before, the fear low in his stomach before every single performance and he’s just a backup dancer.

3RACHA just raised their hands high up in the air and released the kite, hoping that a favourable gust of wind would propel it. 

Minho is 25 when he learns that letting go doesn’t have to end in a crash, it can make you _fly_. It’s in some European country where he’s just an idol’s support that no one pays attention to, but he dances and he’s just so so _happy._

They’re in Warsaw when the snow falls. It’s understandable – it’s November after all, but it still catches Minho by surprise. He’s been so focused on the fact that there’s just two stops left before they go back to Korea and have a short break before continuing onto the Asian part of the tour that he forgot about the change in seasons. After a quick search through his suitcase, he realizes he never brought any warmer clothes, so when a day before the concert they get the morning off, he rushes to a shopping mall.

He purchases a jacket quickly, along with a few sweaters because they still have Moscow left and it’ll probably be even colder there. It’s 11 am on a weekday, so the streets are empty and although his hotel is not that far, Minho doesn’t feel like walking back. Thank God for Google Maps, because without it he wouldn’t be able to take a bus there, but as it is, he finds the bus stop quickly and perches on the bench. He has ten minutes until the bus is set to come.

In the time he spent at the mall, the snow had piled up a bit, enough to create a thin white layer on the trees and parked cars. It seems different than the snow back home, almost more magical with how it’s glistening in the sun like glitter, but maybe it’s just that he’s forgotten. He hasn’t properly sat down and admired it since his childhood, too busy with adult responsibilities. In Seoul especially, the only thing that he is reminded of when he thinks about it is-

Oh.

It’s Jisung.

It’s funny. Jisung had always been like a warm ray of sun to Minho, fascinating and beautiful like flames dancing in a fireplace, but the first and last time he saw him, both were on the days where the white covered the ground and snowflakes fell from the sky like shooting stars.

As he recalls it, Minho realizes that for the first time since they parted, the memories don’t hurt. There’s just melancholy and fondness in his chest as he remembers Jisung’s laugh as they watched Hyunjin’s drunken antics that first time on Nari’s birthday party. His eyes shining in determination when he asked Minho out. His retreating figure after their farewell as the falling snow covered his footsteps as if they’d never been there.

Ever since then, Minho had been frozen in that winter. He hadn’t even realised it, but now as he feels a familiar warmth in his heart when he pictures Jisung’s face in his mind, the same warmth he felt every time he saw him in real life, he knows that it’s true.

Minho watches the air leave his lungs in a puff of steam as he sits on a bench in a country thousands of kilometres from his home, where everyone speaks a language, he doesn’t even know how to say sorry in. He couldn’t let go of that last, cold image of Jisung’s disappearing back for a very long time. That Jisung had been frozen inside him, but this wasn’t fair, was it? Because Jisung was so much more than that. He was warmth and home and bravery to Minho. He was someone who taught him so much. That’s how he should remember him.

It’s been so long. It is time to let go of that winter now.

“Goodbye, Jisung-ah,” he says to the empty bus stop, in an answer to a sentence he heard so many months ago. He should’ve said it back then. He didn’t. And there’s that. But the fact he can say it now and mean it, frees something inside him, melts the shell he spent the last year and a half in.

When the bus finally comes, he boards it uncaring of the stares of the other passengers, but he smiles at a little girl when she comes to him and wordlessly hands him a tissue to dry his tear-stricken face.

Life goes on.

They finish the first leg of the tour and come back to Korea with a week off before they need to leave for Japan. Minho can barely recall ever being this happy as he’s now when he makes small talk with the driver of the taxi that is taking him to his hotel. His heart has been light since that Polish concert and he’s giggling when he finally reaches his room, joyful for no reason besides hearing Korean at the reception.

He’s ready. At least that’s what it feels like in this moment, so Minho doesn’t waste it and calls Nari to propose grabbing a coffee together before he can chicken out.

He’s coming back.


	5. will be deleted earlier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> note

Hello,

I've been really busy which is why I'm only doing this now, but - this work is being revised because of one character it contained (you all know who). So, it's gained an OC, which I generally hate but I don't really have another idea for this. And because I'm petty, I'm writing the new character as different from original as I can, so she's female. Uhm... So, sorry if it's not your thing? All I can say is - it can't stay like this. I will try to finish changing it soon.

And I will finish this, I promise. I'm sorry for the delay. Life has gotten in the way.

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a prologue than anything, so don't worry the rest will show up in the next chapter.
> 
> And I love Vonnegut, if you know what I mean.


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